A South Korean cryptocurrency exchange issued an apology on Saturday for mistakenly transferring over $40 billion worth of bitcoin to users, leading to a temporary selloff on the platform.
Bithumb acknowledged that it unintentionally sent 620,000 bitcoins, currently valued at more than $40 billion, and promptly halted trading and withdrawals for the 695 impacted users within 35 minutes of the error occurring on Friday.
Reports indicate that Bithumb had intended to send approximately 2,000 won ($1.37) to each customer as part of a promotional campaign but ended up transferring around 2,000 bitcoins per user in error.
In a statement released on Saturday, Bithumb expressed deep regret for the disruption caused to customers during the distribution process of the promotional event.
The exchange stated that it had successfully retrieved 99.7 percent of the mistakenly sent bitcoins and pledged to use its own resources to fully compensate for the losses incurred in the incident.
While acknowledging that the mistake briefly triggered significant fluctuations in bitcoin prices on the platform as some recipients sold the tokens, Bithumb assured that the situation was swiftly brought under control within five minutes.
Data from the exchange indicated that the token’s prices experienced a momentary decline of 17 percent to 81.1 million won on the platform late Friday.
Bithumb emphasized that the incident was not linked to any external hacking or security breaches.
Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency globally, faced a decline this week, erasing the gains that followed US President Donald Trump’s election victory in November 2024.
