A South Korean cryptocurrency exchange has apologised after mistakenly transferring more than $40bn worth of bitcoin to hundreds of users, triggering brief volatility on its platform.
Bithumb said the error occurred on Friday when it accidentally sent 620,000 bitcoins to 695 users. Trading and withdrawals for the affected accounts were blocked within 35 minutes of the mistake being identified.
Local reports said the exchange had intended to distribute about 2,000 South Korean won, or $1.37, to each customer as part of a promotional event. Instead, it transferred around 2,000 bitcoins to each user.
In a statement, Bithumb apologised for the confusion caused during the distribution process of the promotion. It said 99.7 per cent of the mistakenly sent bitcoins had been recovered and pledged to cover any remaining losses using its own assets.
The exchange acknowledged that the error led to sharp price movements on the platform as some recipients sold the tokens. It said the situation was brought under control within five minutes.
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Charts showed bitcoin prices on Bithumb briefly fell by 17pc to 81.1 million won late on Friday.
In a later statement on Saturday, the platform said some users had traded at unfavourable prices during the drop, including cases of panic selling. It said affected customers would be compensated for the full price difference, along with a 10pc bonus.
Bithumb estimated the losses from the incident at about 1bn won and stressed that the issue was not linked to external hacking or a security breach.
Bitcoin has fallen this week, erasing gains made after US President Donald Trump’s election victory in November 2024.
