Cryptocurrency exchange «donated» $ 2 million to its customers

Customers of the cryptocurrency exchange received about 120 BTC worth more than $ 2 million for free — all due to a software glitch that allowed the platform to «gift» funds to users.

According to Coinberry representatives, users initiated electronic transfers to replenish their exchange account through the Interac e-Transfer service, and the problem most likely occurred at this stage of the hacking chain. Later, users saw on the exchange the funds that allegedly went to Coinberry via Interac e-Transfer and bought BTC. After that, they withdrew the cryptocurrency to their personal wallets and then canceled the initial electronic transfer (without paying for it) without losing a cent of their own money. In total, 546 users became the lucky owners of $ 2 million (the total amount of the exchange’s losses) before the system failure was detected and fixed.

Interestingly, the failure occurred in the middle of summer, but the exchange decided to hide information about the incident, hoping to recover the stolen funds on its own. However, out of 546 users contacted by the exchange, only 37 BTC were returned. Apparently, most customers do not plan to return the funds they received. Currently, Coinberry representatives have appealed to the court and to Binance, which has found some of the misappropriated BTC on its customers' accounts.

A similar situation occurred with the Crypto.com exchange, whose representatives accidentally sent $ 10.5 million to their client instead of $ 100. The woman did not advertise the mistake to the platform’s technical service and spent the money she received. Despite the court’s order to return the money to the cryptocurrency exchange, the woman is not willing to do so.