Cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb mistakenly distributed $ 44 billion worth of bitcoins to users

South Korea’s financial watchdog has announced that it will tighten control over the cryptocurrency market following an incident on the Bithumb exchange where users were falsely credited with billions of dollars worth of bitcoins BTC $70,410.49 Mezo Wrapped BTC 0.03% Market capitalization $39.69 million VOL. 24 hours $2.18 billion . The regulator said it would start inspecting high-risk practices that could undermine market stability and order.

The focus will be on large-scale price manipulation by large asset holders, trading schemes during suspended deposits and withdrawals, and coordinated «pummeling» attacks spread through disinformation on social media. It is planned to create tools for the automatic detection of suspicious trading patterns in real time and text analysis systems based on artificial intelligence.

The Bithumb incident occurred after some customers were mistakenly credited with at least 2,000 BTC instead of small promotional rewards. The total value of these assets was estimated at about $ 44 billion. This caused the price of bitcoin on the platform to drop by 30% compared to global quotes as users tried to sell the coins they received.

The exchange restricted trading and withdrawals for 695 customers within 35 minutes after the erroneous distribution. The regulator noted that the case exposed serious vulnerabilities in internal control systems and did not rule out on-site inspections of crypto exchanges.

In addition to combating manipulation, the financial supervisor plans to introduce fines for IT incidents in the financial sector and increase the responsibility of security managers. A group has also been set up to work on the Basic Law on Digital Assets, which should expand the regulatory framework. These steps are in line with President Lee Jae-myung's policy of combating fraud and «abusive financial practices.»