A Bitcoin Blunder for the Ages: $40 Billion Accidentally Given Away
3 67An anonymous reader shares a report: The hundreds of prize payouts were mostly just a few bucks each, part of a promotional campaign by a South Korean cryptocurrency exchange. The total reward pot: 620,000 Korean won, or about $425. Then came a colossal mistake. A staffer for Bithumb, South Korea's No. 2 crypto exchange, didn't distribute 620,000 Korean won. Rather, the prizes, due to an input error, emerged in a different currency: 620,000 bitcoins, valued at more than $40 billion.
That meant a winner who should have received a sum of 2,000 won -- enough to buy a cheap cup of coffee -- reaped, at least momentarily, more than $120 million in bitcoins. Enough recipients sought to sell or withdraw bitcoin that the market sank 17%, before Bithumb halted transactions after roughly 30 minutes. Those affected included investors who had held bitcoin before the botched giveaway. The losses totaled about $685,000, Bithumb says.
The company has since said it has reversed the transactions or had recipients voluntarily return more than 99% of the misdistributed bitcoins. But Bithumb is still trying to convince users who during the brief window of trading managed to offload more than 100 bitcoins, valued at roughly $9 million, to give back the equivalent funds.
3 comments
Re: Life Imitates Art (Score: 5, Insightful)
by DarkOx ( 621550 ) on Tuesday February 10, 2026 @01:10PM (#65980452)
it is entirely traceable and at least in the US and UK and it consider theft if you knowingly keep a deposit paid to you in error. My 'guess' would that courts would consider that applies to crypto currency ledgers as well.
Now when this crypto stuff was new I suspect prosecutors would have said 'wtf is a bitcoin, I am to busy for this computer nerd nonsense' and let you skate, but we not there anymore.
Sure maybe this no financial institution that can undo your transaction but property law broadly exists outside of banking and finance, and the notion that if someone over pays you a few million dollars worth of bitcoin and your going to say 'sorry Charlie, mine now' is just plain stupid. Some guy in a black robe is going to say return the money and I am going to jail you for contempt if you don't until you do' at least if you are ripping off any of the sorts of people governments tend to protect. If you are ripping off the other sorts of people with millions worth of bitcoin to over pay you in the first place well better look over your shoulder...
'reversed the transactions.' someone explain. (Score: 5, Insightful)
by Fly Swatter ( 30498 ) on Tuesday February 10, 2026 @12:16PM (#65980366)
Bitcoin's selling point was that all transactions are permanently on the ledger - and that it was anonymous and untraceable - you mean they lied?
Re: 'reversed the transactions.' someone explain. (Score: 5, Interesting)
by EldoranDark ( 10182303 ) on Tuesday February 10, 2026 @12:25PM (#65980388)
I think this is because making actual bitcoin transactions is too expensive. Instead, the exchange keeps all of it in one wallet and makes a note of who has how much in a spreadsheet. This way no actual transactions need to take place until someone withdraws the coins into their own wallet.