TL;DR
- Bithumb won two first-instance rulings at the Seoul Central District Court against users who sold erroneously credited BTC.
- The exchange mistakenly credited 620,000 BTC valued at over $40 billion in February 2026; it recovered 99.7% of the total.
- Two additional lawsuits for approximately ₩14.8 million and ₩500 million remain pending judicial resolution.
The South Korean exchange Bithumb won two consecutive first-instance rulings at the Seoul Central District Court, as part of the four civil lawsuits it filed in March 2026 against users who sold Bitcoin erroneously credited to their accounts.
Both rulings, handed down on Wednesday and Thursday of this week, are the culmination of the exchange’s strategy to recover the funds lost following one of the most costly operational errors on record in the crypto industry.
Thursday’s ruling corresponded to a claim of ₩194 million (approximately $140,000), while Wednesday’s addressed a dispute of ₩5 million (around $3,600). Both cases had to be processed through public notice service, as judicial documents could not be delivered to the defendants through ordinary channels. Two additional lawsuits, for ₩14.8 million and ₩500 million respectively, remain pending.
A Near-Catastrophic Error at Bithumb
The origin of the dispute dates back to February 6, 2026, when an exchange employee made a data entry error during a promotional event intended to distribute ₩620,000 —around $420— to 249 users. By selecting BTC instead of the Korean currency as the payment unit, the system credited 620,000 BTC to the participants’ accounts, an amount that exceeded $40 billion at the time.
Bithumb managed to recover 618,212 BTC, equivalent to 99.7% of the total erroneously credited. However, 1,788 BTC had already been sold by some users before the exchange could freeze the affected accounts. The four lawsuits seek to recover the proceeds from those sales in cash, not the Bitcoin itself.
Regulatory Troubles and Investigations
The episode triggered a series of regulatory consequences that have yet to be resolved. South Korea’s Financial Supervisory Service investigated the exchange, focusing on the lack of internal controls that allowed assets the exchange did not hold to be credited.
In early August, the agency formally submitted its inspection opinion to Bithumb, initiating the sanctions process, though no definitive penalty has been announced yet. In addition, the company also faces a six-month partial suspension of operations linked to violations of anti-money laundering regulations, whose enforcement was put on hold following a court order issued in April.
In June, South Korean police also raided the exchange’s offices as part of a separate investigation into alleged hiring favoritism linked to lawmaker Kim Byung-ki.
