South Korea's second-largest cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb accidentally distributed 2,000 Bitcoin per person to hundreds of users during a promotional event, turning a simple mistake into a multi-billion-won incident.
According to the cryptocurrency industry on Tuesday, the accident occurred around 6 p.m. the previous day when Bithumb was running an event to distribute Bitcoin worth between 2,000 won and 50,000 won per person. The company had planned to select winners through a "random box" event with 1%, 3%, and 96% probability tiers, awarding 2,000 to 50,000 won each. However, an operator mistakenly entered the payment unit as "BTC" instead of "won" when processing the prize payments.
Given that Bitcoin was trading at approximately 98 million won per coin at the time, each recipient effectively received about 196 billion won ($145 million). The total amount of Bitcoin that recipients sold and actually withdrew is reported to be approximately 3 billion won ($2.2 million). Bithumb recognized the situation and attempted to recover the funds, but some users had already sold at market price, reportedly realizing profits of hundreds of millions of won. As a result, Bitcoin prices on Bithumb fell to around 81 million won, more than 10% lower than other exchanges.
Bithumb explained that "through our internal control system, we immediately detected the abnormal transactions and quickly restricted trading on related accounts, allowing market prices to recover to normal levels within five minutes." Posts appeared on various online communities with users saying they "couldn't believe their eyes" when they saw billions of won in their accounts.
Bithumb did not disclose the exact scale of damages, stating the figures are still being calculated. In an apology statement, the company said, "We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience caused by the confusion during the event payment process. Sales from some accounts that received the Bitcoin caused a temporary sharp fluctuation in Bitcoin prices."
The company added, "This incident is unrelated to external hacking or security breaches, and we clearly state that there are no issues with system security or customer asset management. Customer assets continue to be safely managed as before, and trading and deposits/withdrawals are operating normally." Bithumb also pledged to "transparently disclose additional facts related to this matter" and stated it has recovered 99.7% of the erroneously distributed funds.