A plan stating that Korbit would sell bitcoin to cover labor costs was posted on the websites of Upbit and Bithumb on the 2nd. But only the sell plan posted by Bithumb contained spelling errors and garbled characters. This happens when an image is generated by artificial intelligence (AI) that is not fully trained in Korean. Korbit said it was "a mistake by Bithumb."
According to the virtual asset industry on the 3rd, Korbit disclosed that it plans to sell 25 bitcoins held under its corporate name between the 5th of this month and the 31st of next month. The global average price of 25 bitcoins was about 2.85 billion won as of 11 a.m. that day.
Because Korbit plans to sell bitcoin from accounts it holds at Upbit and Bithumb, the sell plan was posted not only with Korbit and the Digital Asset eXchange Alliance (DAXA) but also on the websites of Upbit and Bithumb.
However, in the Korbit sell plan posted on Bithumb's website, Teheran-ro appeared as "Tehehan-ro," and "covering operating expenses" appeared as "operating peongbi cheungdo." Some parts were so garbled they were unrecognizable. This occurred in a total of 11 places.
Korbit said, "It appears that a normal document was processed with AI only on Bithumb's side before being uploaded. We sent the exact same sell plan file to Upbit, Bithumb, and DAXA." Bithumb uploaded the problematic sell plan at about 5:50 p.m. the previous day. The sell plan was displayed for about five minutes, and after the notice was edited, a corrected sell plan without issues was uploaded again.
A Bithumb official explained, "The left-right ratio of the sell plan image file sent by Korbit did not match, so we corrected it with AI. The characters appear to have become garbled in that process."
If a virtual asset business operator (exchange or issuer) commits market-disrupting acts such as falsely preparing a sell plan or inaccurately disclosing details, the Virtual Asset User Protection Act allows for imprisonment of at least one year or a fine of up to six times the unjust gains. In addition, the financial authorities may impose administrative sanctions such as a penalty surcharge in a multiple of the unjust gains, business suspension or registration cancellation, and recommendations to dismiss executives.