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A South Korean cryptocurrency exchange mistakenly transferred more than $40 billion in bitcoin to hundreds of users, briefly triggering a selloff before the error was corrected.
The exchange, Bithumb, said on Saturday it accidentally sent 620,000 bitcoins to 695 users during a promotional event on Friday.
Local media reported that Bithumb had intended to send about 2,000 won ($1.37) to each customer but instead transferred roughly 2,000 bitcoins per user.
“We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience caused to our customers due to the confusion that occurred during the distribution process of this (promotional) event,” Bithumb said in a statement.
Bithumb said it halted trading and withdrawals within 35 minutes of the error and recovered 99.7 percent of the mistakenly sent bitcoin.
It added that it would use its own funds to cover the remaining losses.
The exchange said the incident caused “sharp volatility” as some users sold the bitcoin they received.
Prices on the platform briefly fell 17 percent late Friday.
In a later statement, Bithumb said some users traded at unfavourable prices during the incident, including cases of panic selling.
It said affected customers would be compensated for the full price difference, plus a 10 percent bonus.
The company estimated total losses at about 1 billion won and claimed that the incident was “unrelated to external hacking or security breaches”.
