{"id":76315,"date":"2026-02-10T13:26:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T04:26:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/feb\/10\/bithumb-korean-crypto-exchange-sent-bitcoin-mistake"},"modified":"2026-02-10T13:26:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T04:26:12","slug":"south-korean-crypto-exchange-races-to-recover-40bn-of-bitcoin-sent-to-customers-by-mistake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=76315","title":{"rendered":"South Korean crypto exchange races to recover $40bn of bitcoin sent to customers by mistake"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Bithumb has apologised for staff error that sent customers 620,000 bitcoins instead of 620,000 Korean won, equivalent to a few hundred US dollars<\/p>\n<p>South Korea\u2019s second-largest cryptocurrency exchange is scrambling to recover more than $40bn of cryptocurrency after accidentally crediting customers with 620,000 bitcoins during a promotional event last week.<\/p>\n<p>Bithumb said it had corrected most of the mistaken credits, but that about 13bn won ($9m) remained unrecovered after some recipients sold or withdrew the funds before the error was detected.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/feb\/10\/bithumb-korean-crypto-exchange-sent-bitcoin-mistake\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bithumb has apologised for staff error that sent customers 620,000 bitcoins instead of 620,000 Korean won, equivalent to a few hundred US dollarsSouth Korea\u2019s second-largest cryptocurrency exchange is scrambling to recover more than $40bn of cryptocurr&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2929,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[309,310,222],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bitcoin","category-cryptocurrencies","category-south-korea"],"aioseo_notices":[],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2929"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=76315"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76316,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76315\/revisions\/76316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=76315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=76315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=76315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}