What Happened
On February 6, 2026, an employee at Bithumb entered an incorrect value during a promotional payout event. Instead of distributing 620,000 Korean won — approximately $420 — to each of 249 event winners, the system processed a transfer of 620,000 Bitcoin per user. At the time of the error, the total value of the mistaken transfer was approximately 62 trillion Korean won, or around $42 billion.
Bithumb detected the error and reversed the transactions within minutes. On the same day, the exchange announced it had recovered 99.7% of the funds. The remaining 0.3% — 1,788 BTC — had already been sold by recipients before accounts were frozen. Bithumb covered that shortfall using company reserves.
The 7 BTC Still Missing
In the weeks following the incident, Bithumb contacted affected users individually and recovered the vast majority of the outstanding amount. However, a small number of recipients have refused to return their remaining holdings. According to a report by South Korean outlet Chosun Biz, 7 Bitcoin remains outstanding as of April 9, 2026.
Some of those recipients reportedly argued they were not obligated to return the funds, reasoning that the error was the platform’s responsibility — not theirs. Bithumb has now filed for a provisional attachment, a court-approved mechanism under South Korean law that freezes the assets in question ahead of a formal civil lawsuit, preventing recipients from moving or disposing of the funds while proceedings are underway.
An industry official familiar with the matter told Chosun Biz that those refusing to return the funds are likely to face unfavorable outcomes in court. Under South Korean law, mistakenly received assets are typically classified as unjust enrichment and carry a legal obligation to be returned regardless of whether the recipient was at fault for the error.
The Broader Consequence
The February payout error triggered a regulatory response that extended well beyond Bithumb itself. An emergency inspection by South Korea’s Financial Services Commission found that three of the five major domestic exchanges were reconciling their internal ledgers against actual holdings only once every 24 hours — a gap that allowed the error to process without automated detection.
The FSC subsequently issued a sweeping new compliance mandate: all exchanges must implement automated reconciliation every five minutes, deploy automatic kill switches when significant discrepancies are detected, move to monthly external audits, and disclose reconciliation results publicly on a daily basis. The industry body DAXA has been directed to finalize the rule changes by end of April 2026, with IT systems operational by end of May.
Bithumb itself faces a separate regulatory track. The Financial Supervisory Service is reviewing whether the February incident constituted violations of the Virtual Asset User Protection Act, with sanctions procedures to follow if violations are confirmed. The exchange has also delayed its previously planned IPO to post-2028 as it works through the compliance rebuilding process under the advisory guidance of Samjong KPMG.
