Seoul: South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb apologised on Saturday after erroneously distributing 620,000 bitcoins — worth around $44 billion — to 695 customers, sparking a brief market rout.
The glitch occurred on Friday during a promo event meant to award cash prizes of 2,000 Korean won ($1.37) or more per winner. Instead, recipients got at least 2,000 BTC each. Bitthumb locked tr
ading and withdrawals for affected accounts within 35 minutes.
Bitthumb said it had recovered 99.7% of the 620,000 bitcoins, worth about $44 billion at current prices. It had restricted trading and withdrawals for the 695 affected customers within 35 minutes of the erroneous distribution on Friday, media reports said.
“We would like to make it clear that this incident is unrelated to external hacking or security breaches, and there are no problems with system security or customer asset management,” Bithumb said in a statement.
Bitcoin prices briefly slumped 17% to 81.1 million won on Friday evening on Bitthumb, charts from the exchange show. It later recovered and last traded at 104.5 million won. Bitthumb trails Upbit, a dominant player in the South Korean crypto space.