Bithumb CEO Lee Jaewon: "We Will Broadly Define the Scope of Victim Relief"

On the 11th, Bithumb CEO Lee Jaewon stated regarding the erroneous Bitcoin payment incident, "We will broadly define and complete the scope of victim relief through various complaints being filed."

Lee Jaewon, CEO of Bithumb, is responding on the 11th at a plenary session of the National Assembly's Political Affairs Committee to urgent questioning about the large-scale erroneous Bitcoin payout that occurred at the domestic virtual asset exchange. Yonhap News

At the emergency inquiry on Bithumb held by the National Assembly's Political Affairs Committee that day, CEO Lee responded to Homeland Innovation Party lawmaker Shin Jangsik's question, "How will you provide relief to the victims?" by saying, "We currently view two areas as subject to relief: panic selling that occurred at the time of selling 1,788 coins, and forced liquidations that occurred for about 30 people."

Lawmaker Shin criticized, saying, "It will only be a genuine apology if you say that you will accept regulations on consumer protection and on risk management systems at the level applied to financial institutions," adding, "Bowing your head is not an apology. There are problems in all aspects: in the prevention stage, in the process, in the follow-up measures, and in victim relief."

Financial Supervisory Service Governor Lee Chanjin said, "As for on-site inspections for other companies, I understand that the emergency response team operated by the Financial Services Commission and the Financial Supervisory Service will be deployed before the holidays," and added, "The results of the Bithumb inspection will also come out soon."

Previously, on the afternoon of the 8th, Bithumb attempted to pay prize money ranging from 2,000 won to 50,000 won per person to winners of an event, but mistakenly entered the unit as "Bitcoin" instead of "won," resulting in the erroneous payment of 620,000 Bitcoins. It has been assessed as an unprecedented incident in which virtual assets worth more than 60 trillion won at book value were erroneously paid out in the system.

Bithumb blocked trading and withdrawals 35 minutes after the incident occurred and recovered 99.7% of the erroneously paid Bitcoins. It additionally secured about 93% of the 1,788 Bitcoins that had been sold, but is believed to have failed to recover approximately 125 Bitcoins. Around 13 billion won worth remains unrecovered, and customer damages from low-price sales and price distortion are estimated to be around 1 billion won.