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South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb has reportedly started legal proceedings to recover remaining funds mistakenly sent to participants in a promotional event, according to a local report. The exchange is seeking a provisional seizure of assets belonging to users who were credited with bitcoin in error.
The incident occurred on Feb. 6 and stemmed from a clerical mistake during the promotion. Bithumb intended to distribute a total of $418,500 (620 million won) to 249 winners. Instead of entering the payout in Korean won, an employee mistakenly designated the amount in bitcoin, leading to the distribution of 620,000 BTC.
After the event, South Korea’s Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) began inspecting Bithumb’s internal systems to assess whether the exchange breached the country’s virtual asset protection laws. The probe is also described as a policy-shaping exercise, with regulators indicating that the outcome could affect the drafting of South Korea’s second-stage virtual asset legislation.
Officials said the review is likely to inform stricter rules related to ownership structures, shareholder control, and governance standards.
Bithumb reportedly canceled most of the transactions within minutes. However, some users acted quickly by selling the coins or converting them into other assets, leaving an unrecovered balance of approximately $8.3 million (12.3 billion won).
The exchange is now focused on recovering the final seven BTC still held by a small number of customers. At the time of the error, those seven coins were worth roughly $472,500. Bithumb has filed for provisional attachment, a court-sanctioned measure intended to freeze a debtor’s assets to prevent them from being moved or hidden before a formal lawsuit begins.
An industry official said some customers are refusing to return the funds, arguing that because the error was the company’s mistake, the money is theirs to keep.

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