Bithumb has filed for a court-approved asset freeze to recover the final 7 BTC still not returned after its February payout error. The article values that amount at about $496,000. Two months after the incident, the exchange is still trying to retrieve the remaining funds, turning one of the biggest accidental Bitcoin distributions in exchange history into a live court matter.
A reward typo created 620,000 BTC on internal balances
The incident happened on February 6 during a “Random Box” promotional event. A Bithumb employee entered the wrong currency unit. Instead of distributing 2,000 Korean won, roughly $1.37, to each winner, the system sent 2,000 BTC to 695 users at the same time.
Within minutes, Bithumb’s internal ledger showed 620,000 BTC credited across user accounts. None of it existed on-chain. It was only a database entry, but some users sold right away. Bitcoin on Bithumb fell 17% to $55,000 while global prices barely moved. The exchange froze the accounts within 35 minutes and reversed 99.7% of the mistaken credits before the end of the day.
Regulators moved in after system control failures surfaced
In an internal email, Bithumb Exchange Business Division Vice President Hwang Seung-wook said that a single mistake in setting an event reward unit was enough to disrupt an entire crypto exchange, exposing the state of the company’s systems. South Korea’s FSS, FSC, and FIU later opened investigations. CEO Lee Jae-won told parliament that the company was fully aware of deficiencies in internal system controls.
According to the report, lawmakers said regulators inspected Bithumb three times between 2022 and 2025 without catching the structural warning signs. Three weeks ago, the FIU fined the exchange $24.6 million for 6.65 million AML violations and imposed a six-month suspension on new-user registration. The fallout also pushed Bithumb to delay its planned US IPO until 2028.
The last 7 BTC could test how courts treat exchange-held crypto
The court filing is not only about the value of the remaining coins. It also raises a narrower legal question: whether users who knowingly kept funds from an obvious system error can face legal consequences.
The report notes that South Korea’s Supreme Court ruled in January that Bitcoin held on exchanges can be treated as property subject to seizure. Bithumb’s attempt to recover the final 7 BTC may become one of the first practical tests of that position. The case also exposes a basic feature of centralized exchanges: the balance shown to a user is not always the same thing as Bitcoin existing on-chain.