Bithumb acknowledges promotional campaign glitch following unusual Bitcoin trading activity
According to the South Korean cryptocurrency platform, a technical malfunction during a marketing campaign resulted in temporary price irregularities, with the exchange emphasizing that client funds remained secure.
The South Korean cryptocurrency platform Bithumb announced that it has detected and resolved an internal distribution mistake following the crediting of an "abnormal amount" of Bitcoin to certain user wallets during a marketing campaign, which temporarily led to significant price swings on the platform.
Through an official statement released on Friday, the cryptocurrency exchange based in South Korea explained that the price irregularities took place when some users who received the incorrectly distributed Bitcoin proceeded to sell their holdings, though the exchange swiftly applied restrictions to the impacted accounts using internal security measures, enabling prices to return to normal levels within a matter of minutes and averting any cascade of forced liquidations.
The exchange emphasized that the occurrence had no connection to any cyberattack or security compromise and caused no losses to client funds, further noting that its trading services, deposit functionality and withdrawal operations continue to function as expected. Bithumb stated that user assets continue to be securely protected and pledged to provide transparent updates regarding subsequent measures to avoid comparable mistakes in the future.
Although Bithumb refrained from revealing the specific amount at issue, multiple social media users on X made assertions that certain accounts received incorrect credits of approximately 2,000 Bitcoin (BTC), though this information has yet to be confirmed through independent sources.
This development follows Bithumb's announcement in January regarding its discovery of approximately $200 million worth of inactive user holdings distributed across 2.6 million accounts that showed no activity for a period exceeding one year, which formed part of an asset recovery initiative.
Data from CoinGecko indicates that Bithumb presently maintains a trust rating of 7 out of 10 and recorded approximately $2.2 billion in trading volume over a 24-hour period as of this writing.
Operational issues at centralized cryptocurrency exchanges
In addition to price fluctuations, the previous year has revealed operational difficulties at centralized cryptocurrency trading platforms that have impacted customers during standard operations and times of market turbulence.
Last June, Coinbase publicly recognized that account restrictions had represented a significant problem for the platform, and stated it had successfully decreased unwarranted account freezes by 82% after implementing improvements to the exchange's machine-learning algorithms and operational systems.
This admission came after an extended period of user grievances from customers who described being prevented from accessing their accounts for extended periods, often during times of increased market instability, despite the absence of any security incident or external intrusion.
Throughout the Oct. 10 market downturn that resulted in billions of dollars worth of forced position closures, Binance encountered user criticism alleging that technical difficulties prevented certain traders from closing their positions during moments of extreme volatility.
While Binance maintained that its primary trading systems continued to operate without interruption, and linked the liquidations mainly to overall market dynamics rather than platform malfunctions, the trading platform subsequently allocated approximately $728 million in reimbursements to customers who experienced issues from the service interruptions.
