The failure happened on February 6 during a promotional campaign when, instead of the promised bonus of 2,000 Korean won, some clients were credited with huge amounts in bitcoins. The error affected several hundred user accounts.
In response to the incident, Bithumb immediately suspended trading and withdrawals for the affected clients. According to the exchange, most of the incorrectly credited funds were returned, as clients did not have time to use these funds.
Bithumb representatives noted that the incident is not related to hacking attacks or breaches—the cause lies in a technical error within the system. Financial regulators in South Korea announced the start of an investigation into the circumstances of the incident.
Reports of the failure caused temporary fluctuations in bitcoin prices in the local market and raised questions about the reliability of control systems on centralized cryptocurrency exchanges.
