- Bithumb has filed a court order to freeze assets of users who have not returned 7 Bitcoin from the February payout error.
- South Korean law generally requires recipients of mistaken assets, deemed unjust enrichment, to return them.
- Following the incident, regulators now require all crypto exchanges to reconcile their ledgers every five minutes.
- The exchange initially recovered 99.7% of the roughly 620,000 Bitcoin erroneously sent during a promotional event.
A South Korean cryptocurrency exchange is now taking targeted customers to court over a massive and erroneous payout from February. According to a report from Chosun Biz, Bithumb has initiated a provisional attachment to freeze assets belonging to users who refuse to return the final 7 Bitcoin stemming from a $42 billion mistake. The exchange intended to distribute 620,000 won ($420) in a promotional event but instead sent out 620,000 Bitcoin to winners.
Bithumb reversed most transactions within minutes, recovering 99.7% of the funds that same day. The remaining 0.3% was covered by the company’s reserves after the Bitcoin had been sold. However, the exchange has since been in direct contact with users to claw back the sold funds.
Consequently, a small group of recipients has refused to cooperate with these recovery efforts. They argued the exchange’s own error meant they were not responsible for returning the funds. Meanwhile, a report claimed those users may face unfavorable outcomes if the case proceeds in court.
South Korea‘s Financial Services Commission has since mandated that all exchanges reconcile their ledgers with actual holdings every five minutes. Consequently, this follows an inspection revealing three major local exchanges were only reconciling balances once daily.
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