Bithumb has accumulated the largest amount of fines and penalty surcharge among Korea's five major virtual asset exchanges since its founding. It also received the most monetary sanctions in terms of frequency among the exchanges. Next after Bithumb, Upbit had the highest amount and number of monetary sanctions.
On the 18th, according to the financial sector, Bithumb was fined 36.8 billion won by the Financial Services Commission the previous day for violating the Act on Reporting and Using Specified Financial Transaction Information. This is the largest monetary sanction ever imposed by the financial authorities on a virtual asset exchange.
According to the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) under the Financial Services Commission (FSC), Bithumb conducted a total of 45,772 virtual asset transfer transactions with unreported overseas virtual asset businesses. The FIU said it repeatedly asked Bithumb to halt the transactions, but Bithumb did not comply. In addition, Bithumb violated 6.59 million obligations under the Act, including customer due diligence and transaction restriction duties, and 16,000 obligations to retain materials such as real-name verification certificates.
Since its founding in 2014, Bithumb has repeatedly received monetary sanctions in the tens of millions of won. It began when nearly 40,000 pieces of personal information were leaked in a 2017 hacking incident, leading the Korea Communications Commission at the time to impose 58 million won in fines and a penalty surcharge. Over this, Bithumb Holdings and founder Lee Jeong-hoon were sentenced to a 30 million won fine in the first trial. However, the fine case received a dismissal on appeal because the legal provision the prosecution had applied to the indictment was deleted.
In 2023, Bithumb was also fined 84 million won by the Financial Services Commission (FSC) for violating the Act. Bithumb could also face fines over last month's erroneous bitcoin crediting totaling 62 trillion won. When a similar incident occurred at Samsung Securities in 2018, the financial authorities imposed fines of 144 million won.
Next after Bithumb, Upbit had the largest amount of fines. In Nov. last year, the FIU imposed fines of 35.2 billion won on Upbit for violating the Act. Upbit was also fined 80 million won in 2023 for violating the Act.