Bithumb Pursues Recovery of $8.3 Million in Bitcoin from Mistaken Crediting

Bithumb, South Korea's second-largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, is taking action to recover $8.3 million in bitcoin from users who were mistakenly credited with the assets.

In February, a promotion on the exchange ran into issues when staff entered 'BTC' instead of 'KRW' in the system, leading to 249 winners being credited with 620,000 bitcoin on Bithumb's internal ledgers. This resulted in the creation of an enormous amount of value in bitcoin.

The error was quickly corrected and most of the sold coins were recovered, but about $8.3 million remained outstanding. After months of outreach to the users involved, only seven bitcoin remain unreturned.

According to legal experts in Korea, cases like this fall under unjust enrichment, meaning that recipients must return the assets. If coins were sold, users may need to buy them back at higher prices to repay their debt.