Bithumb Secures Court Wins in Ongoing Effort to Recover Bitcoin Transfer Error Funds

Bithumb has secured two court victories in its ongoing efforts to recover funds mistakenly paid out to customers. In February, a Bithumb employee processing a customer event reward entered Bitcoin as the payout unit instead of Korean won, resulting in users being credited with 620,000 units of BTC, worth around $43 billion at the time.

Financial authorities said Bithumb froze transactions and withdrawals once it caught the error and managed to recover 618,214 units, but 1,786 BTC had already been sold. The exchange has been pursuing those funds separately and has clawed back 99% of the 1,788 units still outstanding as of March 10.

In a separate suit worth 4,989,990 won, Kim Yu-seong, a single-judge civil court judge in the Seoul Central District Court's Civil Division 90, sided with Bithumb in an unjust enrichment claim against user A. The disputed sum in this case is 194,000,443 won.

Bithumb's smaller competitors like Coinone are offering lower trading fees to attract customers, but the exchange remains the largest player in the market, with its 24-hour volume topping 2 trillion won last Saturday as Bitcoin briefly cleared $80,000. This has ignited hope that Bithumb will be able to revive its fee revenue after the operating profit for the first-half of the year fell by 83.4% at Bithumb.