Bithumb, one of South Korea's crypto exchanges, said Saturday it has recovered almost all of the 620,000 bitcoins mistakenly sent to users, which briefly dragged down the bitcoin price.
According to Bithumb, it had mistakenly sent 620,000 bitcoins to 249 users who participated in a promotional event around 7 p.m. on Friday, which translated into an average of 2,490 bitcoins worth 244 billion won ($166 million) to a single user.
The crypto exchange halted the transactions and withdrawals of the users' accounts at 7:40 p.m.
Bithumb said it had recovered 618,212 bitcoins immediately and additionally recouped 93 percent of 1,788 bitcoins sold by the users.
Consequently, Bithumb still failed to recover 125 bitcoins.
The accident took place as a Bithumb employee mistakenly typed the payment unit as "BTC" instead of the "Korean won" for a reward to the users of the promotional event.
The fallout caused a brief drop in the bitcoin price on Bithumb as users sold the bitcoin received.
The company estimated the amount of customer losses due to the erroneous payment to be around 1 billion won.
It confirmed cases where transactions occurred under unfavorable conditions, and announced its plan to compensate affected customers who panic-sold by covering the full price difference plus an additional 10 percent bonus.
CEO Lee Jae-won offered an apology and vowed to "take full responsibility" for the incident.
Meanwhile, the country's financial watchdog sent its staff to inspect Bithumb's fallout.
The Financial Supervisory Service will look into the crypto exchange's measures to protect its users and the possibility of a full recovery of mistakenly sent bitcoins. (Yonhap)
