A cryptocurrency exchange platform in South Korea mistakenly gave more than US$40 billion in bitcoins to users, a glitch that for a few minutes made several of them multimillionaires, before the company blocked operations and began recovering the funds.

The company, Bithumb said the incident was not related to hacking or a security breach and that it managed to recover almost all of the bitcoins sent in error. According to the company, the mistaken delivery occurred on Friday when Bithumb intended to give its customers a small cash reward of 2,000 won (approximately US$1.37). However, instead of that bonus, the system ended up sending bitcoins: the platform "gave away" more than US$40 billion in the cryptocurrency to customers. Bithumb stated that it quickly identified the problem and restricted trading and withdrawals for the 695 affected customers within 35 minutes of the error occurring. The company indicated that a total of 620,000 bitcoins were sent in error and that it recovered 99.7% of those units. In a statement issued on Friday, Bithumb stated: “We want to make it clear that this matter has nothing to do with external hacking or security breaches and that there is no issue with system security or customer asset management.” The regulator is investigating, and the company is offering compensation. The case has reached the financial authorities. At an emergency meeting held on Saturday, South Korea’s financial regulator said it would review the incident. The Financial Supervisory Service warned that any indication of illegal activity could lead to formal investigations. Bithumb, for its part, stated that it will cooperate with the authorities. CEO Lee Jae-won said the company will take the incident as a learning experience and will prioritize “customer trust and peace of mind” over external growth.As part of the announced measures, Bithumb stated that it plans to pay 20,000 won (about US$13.66) in compensation to all customers who were using the platform at the time of the outage and will also waive transaction fees, among other measures. The firm also promised to strengthen its controls: it assured that it will improve verification systems and incorporate artificial intelligence to detect anomalous transactions. The incident could reopen the debate about stricter regulatory controls in the financial sector, especially when operational errors in large institutions have generated high-profile episodes in other markets. For example, in April 2024, the US bank Citigroup mistakenly credited an account with US$81 billion instead of US$280 billion. Although two employees did not detect the error before processing it, the institution reversed the transaction within a few hours, after a third employee noticed the mistake, according to reported the British newspaper Financial Times.