South Korea's cryptocurrency trading platform mistakenly awarded a total of over 620,000 bitcoins valued at more than $40 billion USD to several hundred customers unintentionally.
Foreign news agencies reported that Bithumb, one of South Korea's largest cryptocurrency exchanges, revealed on Saturday, 7 Feb 2026, that it had inadvertently given bitcoins worth over $40 billion USD (approximately 1.26 trillion baht) to hundreds of customers, triggering heavy sell-offs on the exchange.
Reports stated that Bithumb intended to distribute small cash rewards of about 2,000 won (around 43 baht) or more to each user as part of a promotional campaign. However, the fortunate recipients instead received approximately 2,000 bitcoins each.
Following the incident, Bithumb apologized for the error on Friday, confirming that they suspended trading and withdrawals for the 695 affected customers within 35 minutes of the event. They have since recovered 99.7% of the 620,000 bitcoins mistakenly distributed.
“We want to clarify that this incident was not related to any external hacking or security breach and there are no issues concerning system security or the management of customer assets,” Bithumb stated in a press release.
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Source:cna