Crypto glitch sends $44 billion in bitcoin to users by mistake
S. Korean exchange Bithumb accidentally transfers billions during a promo, markets react
In an extraordinary and unintended crypto giveaway, South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb mistakenly sent billions of dollars’ worth of bitcoin to users during what was meant to be a modest promotional reward event, briefly roiling markets and highlighting risks in automated financial systems.
On Friday, Bithumb — one of South Korea’s largest digital asset exchanges — launched a promotion intended to credit customers with a small cash bonus of about 2,000 Korean won (roughly $1.37) each. Instead, due to what the company later described as a distribution error, winners were credited with at least 2,000 bitcoins each, collectively amounting to roughly 620,000 bitcoins — worth approximately $44 billion at current prices.
The incident unfolded on the platform’s ledger and quickly spread across crypto feeds and social platforms.
Within about 35 minutes of the erroneous transfers, Bithumb froze trading and withdrawals for the 695 affected users and recovered roughly 99.7 per cent of the mistakenly distributed bitcoins, the exchange told Reuters in a statement. The company emphasised that the error was not caused by hacking or a security breach, and that there were “no problems with system security or customer asset management.”
The scale of the mishap briefly spooked traders. On Bithumb’s own charts, bitcoin prices slumped as much as 17 per cent in response to the sudden influx of sell orders tied to the distributed coins before recovering later.
Market analysts and regulators alike reacted swiftly. South Korea’s Financial Services Commission held an emergency meeting after the incident, saying it exposed “vulnerabilities and risks of virtual assets” and stating regulators could launch on-site inspections of Bithumb and other exchanges based on internal control audits.
The event has reignited broader debates over the reliability of automated systems in crypto exchanges, where promotional tools, smart contracts and automated scripts frequently interact with billions of dollars in digital assets. In recent years, other high-profile exchange failures and hacks — such as the 2018 Bithumb security breach and other platform exploits — have already drawn global scrutiny over crypto-asset risk management.
Despite the scale of the blunder, Bithumb says it absorbed the costs and covered any losses from its own capital.
