Financial regulators failed to spot IT loopholes despite inspecting Bithumb six times over five years

Financial authorities have been found to have failed to identify in advance vulnerabilities in Bithumb’s IT systems—cited as the cause of the latest large-scale erroneous payment incident—despite carrying out six rounds of inspections and examinations over the past five years.

According to materials submitted on the 12th by Rep. Kang Min-kuk of the People Power Party, received from the Financial Services Commission (FSC) and the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS), the two agencies each conducted three inspections/examinations of Bithumb from 2021 to 2025. The FSC carried out one inspection in 2022 and two in 2025, while the FSS conducted two ad hoc examinations and one inspection.

However, despite repeated oversight, the structure of an “IT system that allows erroneous entries” was not filtered out.

Rep. Kang said during an emergency inquiry at the National Assembly’s Political Affairs Committee the previous day, “This incident is a case that plainly reveals lax management and supervision by financial authorities and institutional gaps.”

FSC Vice Chairman Kwon Dae-young acknowledged, “There are aspects where oversight and制度 have failed to keep pace with the speed of the virtual asset market’s expansion,” adding, “We will establish multilayered, multiple control mechanisms and reflect them in the phase-two legislative process for the Virtual Asset Act.”