A South Korean cryptocurrency exchange, Bithumb, accidentally transferred more than $40 billion worth of bitcoin to users due to a mistaken distribution during a promotional event, the company said in a statement.
Bithumb apologised for the error and said it took steps to recover the funds and limit trading activity on the platform.
The exchange said it mistakenly sent 620,000 bitcoins, valued at over $40 billion at current market prices, to 695 customers before it blocked trading and withdrawals within 35 minutes of discovering the error. The tokens represented promotional rewards that were intended to be small cash gifts to users.
Bithumb said it had recovered 99.7 per cent of the mistakenly distributed bitcoins and would cover any losses with its own assets. The exchange also emphasised that the incident was unrelated to external hacking or security breaches and that there were no issues with system security or customer asset management.
The company’s statement said the error briefly caused sharp volatility in bitcoin prices on the platform, with charts showing prices fell before stabilising. Bithumb said it brought the situation under control soon after restricting affected users’ accounts.
