A South Korean cryptocurrency exchange apologised on Saturday after mistakenly transferring more than $40 billion worth of bitcoin to users, briefly triggering a sell-off on the platform.
Bithumb said it accidentally sent 620,000 bitcoins, currently valued at over $40 billion, and blocked trading and withdrawals for the 695 affected users within 35 minutes of the error occurring on Friday.
Local reports indicated that Bithumb intended to send about 2,000 won ($1.37) to each customer as part of a promotional event but mistakenly transferred roughly 2,000 bitcoins per user.
“We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience caused to our customers due to the confusion that occurred during the distribution process of this promotional event,” Bithumb said in a statement released on Saturday.
The platform said it had recovered 99.7 per cent of the mistakenly sent bitcoins and would use its own assets to fully cover the remaining loss.
Bithumb acknowledged that the error briefly caused “sharp volatility” in bitcoin prices on the platform as some recipients sold the tokens but said the situation was brought under control within five minutes.
Platform charts showed bitcoin’s price briefly fell 17 per cent to 81.1 million won late on Friday.
The exchange emphasised that the incident was “unrelated to external hacking or security breaches.”
Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, has fallen this week, erasing gains sparked by US President Donald Trump’s election victory in November 2024.
