Lee Chanjin, Governor of the Financial Supervisory Service, stated on the 11th that he had ordered a full-scale inspection of the proof-of-reserves (POR) systems at virtual asset exchanges.
During an emergency inquiry at the National Assembly’s Political Affairs Committee on issues related to Bithumb that day, Governor Lee responded to a request from Assemblywoman Kim Hyunjung of the Democratic Party of Korea, who said, "Other exchanges such as Upbit and Coinone are said to have established POR systems, so please conduct a comprehensive inspection," by saying, "I have given specific instructions regarding those details."
POR is a system that allows customers to check, in real time, the assets owned by the virtual asset exchange they use.
Assemblywoman Kim pointed out, "Overseas, under the POR system, they have systems that match on-chain actual holdings with the amounts recorded on the books in real time," adding, "In our country, this has not been made mandatory by law, and in the case of Bithumb, assets were classified only on the books but were not segregated on-chain, which is why this incident occurred."
Earlier, on the afternoon of the 8th, Bithumb attempted to pay prize money ranging from 2,000 won to 50,000 won per person to event winners, but mistakenly entered the unit as "bitcoin" instead of "won," resulting in the erroneous payment of 620,000 bitcoins. This is being described as an unprecedented incident in which virtual assets worth more than 60 trillion won at book value were wrongly transferred in the system.
Bithumb blocked trading and withdrawals 35 minutes after the incident occurred and recovered 99.7% of the mistakenly paid bitcoin. 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. Roughly 13 billion won worth remains unrecovered, and customer losses due to low-price sales and market distortion are estimated at around 1 billion won.
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