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South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb has filed for provisional asset seizure orders through local courts to recover 7 BTC worth $496,000 from users who have refused to return Bitcoin mistakenly distributed during a February trading error, according to Chosun.
On February 6, Bithumb accidentally distributed 620,000 BTC worth more than $43 billion to hundreds of user accounts during a promotional campaign. The exchange recovered 99.7% of the distributed funds within hours of discovering the issue.
However, 1,788 BTC—about 0.3% of the total—were sold by recipients before Bithumb could reclaim them. Bithumb covered these losses using company reserves.
Bithumb’s provisional seizure orders target specific accounts still holding the disputed Bitcoin. A provisional seizure order is a legal procedure that temporarily freezes a debtor’s assets to secure a claim before a final judgment.
Some recipients argued they had no obligation to return the funds because the distribution resulted from Bithumb’s operating error, according to a senior industry official.
Under South Korean law, mistakenly received assets are typically treated as unjust enrichment and must be returned. If the court approves Bithumb’s seizure request, it would set a precedent for how exchanges can pursue recovery through formal legal channels when recipients resist voluntary return requests.
The incident drew criticism from South Korean lawmakers, who questioned regulatory oversight of exchange operations and called for stricter controls on cryptocurrency trading platforms.
Earlier this week, South Korea’s Financial Services Commission ordered all crypto exchanges to reconcile internal ledgers with actual asset holdings every five minutes in response to the Bithumb error.
The mandate followed findings that three of South Korea’s five major exchanges were reconciling balances only once daily, limiting their ability to detect and respond to operational errors in real time.
Bithumb said it would delay its IPO plans to 2028, according to a company spokesperson, after covering the losses from the incident using company reserves.
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