Hot Topic on Global Online Community "Reddit"
Calls to "Ensure Transparency at Virtual Asset Exchanges"
Overseas internet users are focusing their attention on Bithumb, a domestic virtual asset exchange that mistakenly paid out 620,000 Bitcoins (about 62 trillion won). Comments ranged from those curious about whether the exchange will succeed in recovering the funds to those raising long-standing concerns about the reliability of virtual asset exchanges, with a wide variety of opinions being shared.
On the 7th (local time), a post titled "Korean exchange Bithumb accidentally sent 2,000 Bitcoins to hundreds of customers" appeared on Reddit, the world's largest global online community. The post quickly drew strong interest, racking up more than 100 comments in a short period of time.
On the 6th, an electronic billboard at the Bithumb Lounge in Gangnam-gu, Seoul displays the Bitcoin price. Yonhap News
Internet users reacted with disbelief at the scale of the Bitcoins Bithumb had mispaid. Various comments were posted, such as, "Are you sure 2,000 coins were not split among hundreds of people, but that hundreds of people each received 2,000?", "Even with a rough calculation, that comes to tens of trillions of won," and "Could it be that this week's Bitcoin crash was caused by that exchange?"
One user joked, "This looks like a classic fat finger incident (a financial loss caused by human input error). I wish a lucky mistake like this would happen to me too." Another user criticized virtual asset exchanges by saying, "These exchanges claim to be selling Bitcoin, but in reality they do not actually hold Bitcoin," and added, "Unless real-time audits of (cryptocurrency trading) are conducted and updated, it is hard to regard their ledgers as truly transparent."
According to Yonhap News, on the 6th at 7:00 p.m., Bithumb attempted to pay 620,000 won each to 249 winners of a so-called "random box" event, but mistakenly entered "Bitcoin (BTC)" instead of "won (KRW)," resulting in a payout of 620,000 Bitcoins. Thirty-five minutes after the incident occurred, Bithumb blocked trading and withdrawals from the mispaid accounts. However, by that time, some winners had already disposed of 1,788 Bitcoins.
Bithumb succeeded in recovering most of the sold Bitcoins in the form of won or other virtual assets. However, as of 4:30 a.m. on the 7th, it had still not recovered approximately 125 Bitcoins.
Meanwhile, in connection with this mispayment incident, the financial authorities have decided to review the overall internal controls of all virtual asset exchanges. On the 8th, the Financial Services Commission held an emergency inspection meeting chaired by Vice Chairman Lee Eok-won, with the Korea Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) and the Financial Supervisory Service in attendance, to discuss institutional improvement measures in response to the Bithumb incident. At the meeting, Vice Chairman Lee stated, "This incident has exposed structural vulnerabilities in the internal control systems of virtual asset exchanges," and ordered that "we will review the overall internal controls not only at Bithumb but at all exchanges and establish appropriate internal control frameworks."
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