Bithumb mistakenly issued 620,000 bitcoins and has recovered 99.7%

According to an announcement from the South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb, the exchange made an operational error during the distribution of activity rewards, resulting in a total of 620,000 bitcoins being incorrectly distributed to 695 users (instead of the previously speculated 2,000). Bithumb quickly froze the trading and withdrawal functions of the relevant accounts within 35 minutes of discovering the issue, and as of the time of publication, it has successfully recovered 618,212 bitcoins, accounting for 99.7% of the total erroneously distributed amount. The 1,788 bitcoins that had been sold have also been recovered at a rate of 93%.

The announcement emphasized that there was no transfer of bitcoins to external wallets during this incident, and it did not involve any hacking or security vulnerabilities. The exchange has committed to using its own assets to make up for the unrecovered bitcoins and will redesign the asset distribution process, strengthening the internal control system to prevent similar incidents from occurring in the future.