TLDRThis news article reports on a significant error by South Korea's Bithumb cryptocurrency exchange, which mistakenly sent 620,000 bitcoins to customers instead of 620,000 Korean won during a promotional event. The error, caused by a staff member entering prize amounts in bitcoin rather than Korean won, resulted in a $40 billion loss for the exchange. Bithumb has corrected most of the erroneous credits but is still trying to recover about $9 million worth of bitcoins. The incident has raised concerns about the internal ledger systems of cryptocurrency exchanges and has sparked a debate on whether the recipients who sold the bitcoins could face criminal prosecution.

Source: The Guardian February 10, 2026 14:36 UTC