Bithumb CEO Lee Jae-won said on the 11th that the company will broadly compensate users who suffered losses from panic selling and forced liquidations caused by a mistaken $60 trillion won Bitcoin payout incident.
At a National Policy Committee inquiry on the 11th, Lee said, "As the person ultimately responsible for the incident, I apologize to the public, who must have been greatly distressed by the mistaken event payout."
Lee said, "We acutely recognize our shortcomings in internal controls, specifically in detecting and responding to the increase in ledger numbers when coins were mistakenly paid out."
Regarding the assessment of damages and the scope of relief for this incident, Lee said, "We view two areas as subject to relief: panic selling that occurred when 1,788 Bitcoins were sold, and the forced liquidations experienced by about 30 people as a result." He added, "Through various complaints being received via the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) inspection and our customer center, we will set a broader scope of relief for victims and see it through to completion."
Lee said, "We lacked an internal control system that requires multiple approvals in the process of paying out event prizes," adding, "During the process of upgrading the operations system and moving to a new system, this aspect was omitted."
Lee also said, "As in this case, allowing a single staff member to pay out coins without a multiple-approval system was a mistake that occurred during the system upgrade process. Under normal circumstances, we maintain procedures requiring multiple approvals."
Lee added, "We will fully meet various requirements, including regulations and supervision comparable to those for financial service providers, as well as internal controls."