A South Korean cryptocurrency exchange has admitted it accidentally sent more than $40 billion worth of Bitcoin to users during a promotional campaign, according to media reports.
Bithumb said the error occurred on February 6, 2026, when it planned to distribute small cash rewards of 2,000 Korean won (about $1.37) to selected users. Instead, the system mistakenly sent at least 2,000 bitcoins to each affected account.
The exchange said around 695 users received the incorrect payouts. Within 35 minutes, Bithumb restricted trading and withdrawals on the affected accounts to prevent further losses.
In a statement, Bithumb said it had recovered 99.7% of the 620,000 bitcoins, valued at roughly $44 billion at current prices. The company added that the incident was not caused by hacking or a security breach.
“This was a system error during a promotional event,” Bithumb said, stressing that customer assets and platform security were not compromised.
The mistake briefly caused panic selling on the exchange. Bitcoin prices on Bithumb fell as much as 17%, dropping to 81.1 million won before later rebounding to around 104.5 million won, according to exchange data.
Bithumb is South Korea’s second-largest crypto exchange, trailing market leader Upbit. The company said it is reviewing its internal processes to prevent similar incidents in the future.
