South Korean Crypto Exchange Accidentally Gave Away $43 Billion in Bitcoin

Core Insights - A South Korean crypto exchange, Bithumb, mistakenly credited users with Bitcoin worth billions, leading to a significant drop in the token's value on the platform [1][3] - The incident occurred during a "Random Box" giveaway, where most users were expected to receive a small prize of 2,000 won, but instead received 2,000 BTC each [2][3] - Bithumb clarified that the credited Bitcoin was recorded only on internal ledgers and did not involve actual on-chain transfers, with the issue being corrected within five minutes [4] Financial Impact - Initial media estimates suggested over $95 billion worth of Bitcoin was accidentally transferred, but Bithumb later confirmed that 620,000 BTC, valued at approximately $43 billion, was credited [3] - Users managed to sell off over $2 billion worth of the mistakenly credited Bitcoin during the brief window before the error was corrected [5] - The rapid sell-off caused Bitcoin's price on Bithumb to plummet to $55,000, significantly lower than prices on other exchanges, which were around $60,000 before rebounding to $71,047 [6] Company Response - Bithumb stated that the incident was not related to any hacking or security breach and did not affect the security of customer assets [7] - The company reported recovering 618,212 BTC of the credited funds and an additional 1,788 BTC from sold assets, amounting to a 93% recovery rate [7] - Bithumb is taking measures to recover the remaining unrecovered assets and will adjust the amount not recovered using company assets [8]