South Korean crypto exchange races to recover $40bn of bitcoin sent to customers by mistake
#Bithumb #Bitcoin #South Korea #Crypto Exchange #Clerical Error #Digital Assets #Blockchain
📌 Key Takeaways
- Bithumb accidentally sent 620,000 bitcoins to users instead of 620,000 Korean won.
- The total value of the mistake peaked at over $40 billion based on current market rates.
- Most of the erroneous transactions have been reversed, but $9 million is still missing.
- The incident was caused by a human clerical error during a promotional marketing event.
📖 Full Retelling
🏷️ Themes
Cryptocurrency, Finance, Technology
📚 Related People & Topics
South Korea
Country in East Asia
South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the southern half of the Korean Peninsula and borders North Korea along the Korean Demilitarized Zone, with the Yellow Sea to the west and the Sea of Japan to the east. Like North Korea, South Korea claims...
Bitcoin
Decentralized digital cryptocurrency
Bitcoin (abbreviation: BTC; sign: ₿) is the first decentralized cryptocurrency. Based on a free-market ideology, bitcoin was invented in 2008 when an unknown person published a white paper under the pseudonym of Satoshi Nakamoto. Use of bitcoin as a currency began in 2009, with the release of its op...
Bithumb
Bitcoin exchange based in South Korea
Bithumb (Korean: 빗썸) is a South Korean cryptocurrency exchange. Founded in 2014, with headquarters in Seoul, it initially went by the name Xcoin, but was rebranded as Bithumb in 2015.
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📄 Original Source Content
<p>Bithumb has apologised for staff error that sent customers 620,000 bitcoins instead of 620,000 Korean won, equivalent to a few hundred US dollars</p><p>South Korea’s second-largest cryptocurrency exchange is scrambling to recover more than $40bn of cryptocurrency after accidentally crediting customers with 620,000 bitcoins during a promotional event last week.</p><p>Bithumb said it had corrected most of the mistaken credits, but that about 13bn won ($9m) remained