A South Korean crypto exchange accidentally dumped more than $40 billion worth of Bitcoin into customer accounts — an astounding error during a giveaway meant to award prizes worth just a few cents each.
The blunder at Bithumb, South Korea’s second-largest cryptocurrency exchange, briefly turned ordinary users into nine-figure Bitcoin holders and triggered a brief crash that rattled the country’s tightly watched digital-asset market.
The incident happened Friday when a Bithumb employee was tasked with distributing giveaway prizes totaling 620,000 Korean won — about $425 — as part of a promotional “random box” event.
Instead of entering the payouts in won, the staffer mistakenly put in the amount in Bitcoin, resulting in 620,000 bitcoins being credited across hundreds of customer accounts — a massive sum worth more than $40 billion at the time.
Only 249 of the 695 qualifying customers opened their prize boxes and received the erroneous payouts, according to regulators.
Bitcoin was trading at just under $70,000 per coin at the time, meaning the mistaken credits briefly transformed recipients into multimillionaires on paper.
The amounts credited far exceeded Bithumb’s actual Bitcoin reserves, and the company detected the error within minutes. It moved to halt trading and withdrawals on affected accounts within about 35 minutes, according to regulators.
But that short window was enough to spark chaos.
Some users sold the phantom Bitcoin on the exchange before controls were fully in place, triggering a sharp, localized plunge in prices on Bithumb.
At one point, Bitcoin prices on the platform fell as much as 15% to 17%, significantly below prices on rival South Korean exchanges.
Financial authorities later said 86 customers managed to sell about 1,788 bitcoins before the freeze took effect.
Some of the proceeds were withdrawn to bank accounts, while other funds were used to purchase different cryptocurrencies.
Bithumb said it has since recovered 99.7% of the mistakenly credited Bitcoin by reversing internal ledger entries and persuading users to return the assets.
About 125 bitcoins — worth roughly $9 million — remain unrecovered, according to multiple reports. The exchange has said it plans to absorb the loss.
In a public apology, Bithumb stressed that the incident was not the result of hacking or a security breach.
“We want to make it clear that this matter has nothing to do with external hacking or security breaches, and there is no problem with system security or customer asset management,” the company stated.
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