Bithumb, a popular South Korean crypto exchange, has caused a stir when it accidentally sent Bitcoin worth about $44 billion to its users in a promotional program.
The mistake occurred when Bithumb actually only intended to give a small reward of around 2,000 Korean won, but due to a system error, the users involved received at least 2,000 Bitcoin each.
The incident triggered panic selling and caused the price of Bitcoin on the platform to drop sharply by up to 17% in a short period of time.
Bithumb acted quickly by blocking trading and withdrawals within 35 minutes, and managed to recover 99.7% of the 620,000 Bitcoins that were misdistributed.
The company insisted that the incident did not involve hacking and there was no security issue for customer assets.
However, South Korea's financial authorities described the incident as evidence of risks and weaknesses in the management of crypto assets, and hinted that they would conduct further inspections of the local crypto exchange.
Although Bitcoin prices recovered after the incident, the incident is a reminder that small errors in the crypto system can have major consequences for global markets.
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