Overview
- Bithumb, which filed provisional seizure requests Thursday, asked South Korean courts to freeze accounts holding 7 BTC that users have not returned after February’s error.
- The mistake on February 6 began when a staffer entered BTC instead of KRW for a promotion, briefly crediting 620,000 bitcoin to hundreds of accounts instead of 620,000 won to 249 winners.
- The exchange reversed most entries within minutes and says it recovered about 99.7% of the coins, while 1,788 BTC sold before freezes were covered using company reserves.
- Some recipients argue the exchange caused the error, yet Korean legal experts point to unjust enrichment rules that require returning mistaken transfers and may force sellers to repurchase BTC at current prices.
- Regulators tightened controls after the incident, with the Financial Services Commission ordering all exchanges to reconcile balances with actual holdings every five minutes to catch errors faster.