The mix-up, which impacted 695 customers, triggered an immediate panic sell-off on the exchange, causing Bitcoin's price on Bithumb to plunge by as much as 17% temporarily before recovering. Bithumb acted swiftly, restricting trading and withdrawals for the involved accounts within just 35 minutes of detecting the issue. The company emphasized that the incident stemmed purely from a processing mistake in the promotion and was not linked to any hacking, security breach, or compromise of user funds and systems.
Bithumb issued a public apology for the disruption and confirmed that it had successfully recovered 99.7% of the mistakenly distributed Bitcoins by Saturday, February 7, 2026. South Korea's Financial Services Commission responded by launching an on-site inspection of Bithumb and signaling potential broader reviews of other exchanges to assess internal controls, asset handling, and operational risks in the virtual asset sector. The episode underscores ongoing vulnerabilities in crypto platforms despite robust security claims, especially amid promotional events.