Bithumb: "Recovered 99% of mistakenly distributed Bitcoin…remaining amount to be covered with company assets"

South Korean virtual asset (cryptocurrency) exchange Bithumb said it has recovered more than 99% of the Bitcoin that was mistakenly distributed in an incident on the 6th.

On the 7th, Bithumb said in a notice, "During the process of paying out event rewards, an input error in the Bitcoin amount led to an accident in which Bitcoin was mistakenly distributed to some customers," conveying the statement.

According to Bithumb, the incident occurred at 7 p.m. on the 6th during the event reward payout process. While rewards were being paid to a total of 695 people, a mistake was made when entering the Bitcoin amount, and about 20 minutes later, at 7:20 p.m., the company recognized that a mispayment had occurred. It then began blocking trading and withdrawals from 7:35 p.m. and completed the block on all affected accounts by 7:40 p.m.

The total amount mistakenly distributed was 620,000 BTC. Bithumb said it blocked trading and withdrawals for all affected customers within about 35 minutes of the mispayment occurring through its internal abnormal-transaction control system, and recovered 618,212 BTC—equivalent to 99.7% of the total mistakenly distributed amount.

Recovery efforts are also under way for assets worth 1,788 BTC that some customers had already sold. Bithumb said it has recovered about 93% of that amount in terms of the Korean won and virtual assets, and explained that it confirmed there were no cases in which the mistakenly distributed Bitcoin was transferred to external wallets.

For the remaining Bitcoin that has not been recovered, Bithumb plans to use company-held assets to eliminate any mismatch with customer assets. The company said, "The amount of coins held in wallets is maintained at exactly 100% identical to the amount displayed on customers’ screens under strict accounting management," adding, "We conduct asset inspections with an external accounting firm every quarter, thereby ensuring transparency."

Bithumb also said it will use this incident as an opportunity to comprehensively reexamine the asset payout process. Bithumb stressed, "We are taking this incident very seriously," and "We will redesign asset payout procedures and advance our internal control systems to devote every effort to preventing a recurrence of similar incidents." It added, "We will do our utmost to restore trust so that users can use our services with confidence."