South Korean crypto exchange Bithumb has filed for a provisional attachment — a court order to freeze assets ahead of a civil suit — to recover about 7 BTC that remain from a February payout mistake.
The error occurred on Feb. 6, when the exchange intended to pay 249 promotion winners 620,000 won each (roughly $420). Due to an input mistake, the system briefly sent 620,000 BTC instead of 620,000 won, temporarily valuing the transfers at about 62 trillion won (roughly $42 billion). Bithumb reversed the transactions within minutes, but some of the coins had already been moved by recipients.
Bithumb says it recovered roughly 99.7% of the mistakenly sent Bitcoin the same day and used company reserves to cover the portion already sold — reported at about 1,788 BTC. Since then the exchange has contacted recipients individually and reclaimed most of the sold funds, but a small number of recipients have refused to return the remainder and have argued they are not legally obliged to do so. That resistance prompted Bithumb to seek provisional attachments against those users to secure the remaining assets while litigation proceeds.
Under South Korean law, assets received in error are generally treated as unjust enrichment and must be returned, which legal observers say could expose recipients who keep the funds to adverse rulings.
Regulators moved quickly after the incident. The Financial Services Commission ordered all local crypto exchanges to reconcile their internal ledgers with actual asset holdings at five-minute intervals to shorten the time it takes to detect discrepancies. An inspection found that three of the country’s five major exchanges were only reconciling balances once a day, a cadence regulators said limited their ability to respond to errors.
Cointelegraph contacted Bithumb for comment but did not receive an immediate response.