Bithumb said on the 8th that it is contacting the account holders of 125 bitcoins that have not yet been recovered out of the 620,000 bitcoins mistakenly paid out as an in-house event reward.
A Bithumb official said in a phone call with ChosunBiz, "We are still discussing how to recover the mistakenly paid bitcoins," noting the above.
Earlier, on the evening of the 6th, Bithumb was set to pay a total of 620,000 won to 249 participants in a free distribution (airdrop) event. However, due to an employee's mistake, the unit "won" was entered as "bitcoin," resulting in 620,000 bitcoins being mispaid.
Bithumb has not yet recovered 125 bitcoins (about 13 billion won). A Bithumb official said, "We understand that the bitcoins were sold by the account holders and withdrawn as cash, or used to purchase other virtual assets such as Ethereum," adding, "Because all of the mispaid bitcoins are now held in other forms, it is difficult to immediately determine a recovery method."
Bithumb is an exchange that can be used only after signing up by entering personal information such as a resident registration number. Therefore, Bithumb has identified everyone who converted the mispaid bitcoins into cash.
A Bithumb official said, "We could take legal steps for recovery, but for now we are contacting the users who received the mispayments individually to ensure a smooth recovery."