Bithumb Wins Second Court Battle Over Botched $40 Billion Bitcoin Promotion

A Seoul court has ordered a user to return approximately $145,000 to Bithumb after a clerical error mistakenly distributed 620,000 Bitcoin during a promotion in February.

The incident occurred on February 6 when an employee processing rewards for a 'random-box' event accidentally entered Bitcoin instead of Korean won as the unit for payment. This resulted in an accounting distribution of approximately 620,000 BTC to user accounts, briefly exceeding $40 billion in value based on market prices at the time.

Bithumb reacted within minutes but some users managed to utilize the erroneous balances before restrictions were implemented. Approximately 1,786 BTC were sold before the exchange successfully blocked operations, causing a localized price flash-crash with Bitcoin dropping by roughly 17% specifically on the Bithumb platform.

The exchange subsequently began canceling the erroneous balances and recovering the assets. Data from the exchange shows that 99.7% of the mistakenly distributed assets were returned voluntarily. The remaining friction involved users who successfully sold portions of the credited Bitcoin and subsequently refused to return the resulting cash proceeds.