South Korea’s crypto market just saw one of its strangest moments: during a promo event, Bithumb accidentally paid out Bitcoin instead of won — worth roughly US$44bn.
A simple input error briefly triggered a mini flash crash and put regulators on alert.
🤦♂️ Expensive typo: Instead of 2,000–50,000 won, some winners received thousands of BTC, effectively hundreds of millions of dollars per person.
The details
Bithumb’s “Random Box” promo was supposed to pay 2,000–50,000 KRW per user. But during payout, the unit was set to BTC instead of KRW.
Private jets instead of coffee: According to Bithumb, 620,000 BTC were credited internally to 695 users. The mistake was spotted after about 20 minutes.
Then it moved fast: accounts were frozen, affected logins restricted, and deposits/withdrawals blocked.
Recovery: Bithumb says 99.7% has been clawed back. In the brief window, about 1,788 BTC were sold; roughly 93% of those have since been recovered. Around 125 BTC remain outstanding.
The investment plan
A price dent on Bithumb: panic market sells briefly pushed BTC on the platform down to ~81.1m KRW (about -17%). After the freeze, prices normalized within minutes.
Bithumb says it will compensate users who sold at bad prices during the chaos, and financial regulators are reviewing the incident.
👉 Full story: Chosun, Business Times, Korea Herald, Straits Times
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