A major mistake at a South Korean cryptocurrency exchange briefly turned hundreds of users into multi-millionaires. The platform, Bithumb, accidentally gave away more than $40 billion worth of bitcoin to its customers due to a system error.
The incident happened on Friday, 6 February, when Bithumb planned to reward users with a small bonus of 2,000 won, equal to about $1.37. Instead, the system mistakenly credited some users with 2,000 bitcoins each, a massive amount worth millions of dollars.
As soon as the error was discovered, the company acted quickly. Bithumb said it restricted trading and withdrawals for 695 affected customers within 35 minutes of the glitch. According to the exchange, it managed to recover 99.7 percent of the mistakenly sent bitcoin, which totaled around 620,000 bitcoins.
In a statement, Bithumb apologized for the incident and assured customers that the problem was not caused by hacking. The company stressed that there was no security breach and no issue with customer asset protection. “This was a system error, not an external attack,” the exchange said.
South Korea’s financial regulator also responded swiftly. The Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) held an emergency meeting on Saturday and announced it would review the incident. Officials said any signs of illegal activity would lead to a formal investigation.
Bithumb said it would fully cooperate with regulators. CEO Lee Jae-won stated that the company would treat the incident as a serious lesson. He added that customer trust and peace of mind would now be the company’s top priority.
To make up for the trouble, Bithumb plans to pay 20,000 won (about $13.66) in compensation to all users who were active on the platform at the time. The exchange will also waive trading fees as part of its recovery steps.
The incident has sparked widespread discussion about safety and controls in the fast-growing cryptocurrency industry.