TLDR
- Over 2.6 million accounts have remained without a login or trade for more than a year.
- A single inactive account contains $2.84 million in unclaimed cryptocurrency.
- Certain forgotten assets have generated historic returns exceeding 61,000%.
Bithumb recently revealed a staggering figure following an internal audit: approximately $200 million (291.6 billion won) in customer funds currently remain stagnant. These dormant digital assets are spread across more than 2.6 million accounts that haven’t recorded trading activity for at least one year.
The review, conducted as part of a dormant asset recovery campaign, uncovered extreme cases of neglect. The oldest record belongs to an account that has not been touched in 4,380 days—equivalent to nearly 12 years.
This suggests that early-era cryptocurrency investors left their positions behind, never imagining the massive appreciation that would follow. The most common assets found in this financial limbo are Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Ripple (XRP).
The Value of Forgetting: Returns of up to 610x
The most shocking aspect of these findings is the exponential performance of these forgotten portfolios. Bithumb reported that several of these dormant digital assets have seen gains exceeding 61,000%. In practical terms, some users have multiplied their original investment by more than 610 times simply by losing access or forgetting their credentials across multiple market cycles.
In fact, one individual account was identified with an unclaimed balance of $2.84 million. This phenomenon is not new for the exchange; in a previous campaign, Bithumb helped 36,000 users recover nearly $50 million.
In response to this discovery, the platform has launched a special feature on its official website called “Check Dormant Assets.” With this tool, the exchange aims to help users verify if they hold inactive funds and facilitate the process of withdrawal or reintegration into the active market.
This initiative highlights a recurring lesson in the sector: sometimes, the “buy and forget” strategy turns out to be the most lucrative—even if it carries the risk of leaving millions of dollars out of circulation for over a decade.
