Abu dhabi: South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb announced on Saturday that it had inadvertently distributed over $40 billion worth of bitcoins to its customers as part of a promotional campaign, leading to a significant selloff on the platform.
According to Emirates News Agency, Bithumb expressed its apologies for the oversight, which occurred on Friday. The company managed to recover 99.7% of the 620,000 bitcoins involved, valued at approximately $44 billion based on current market prices. Within 35 minutes of the misallocation, the exchange had restricted trading and withdrawals for the 695 customers affected by the error.
In a statement, Bithumb clarified, “We would like to make it clear that this incident is unrelated to external hacking or security breaches, and there are no problems with system security or customer asset management.”