FSS orders return of Bithumb’s ’ghost Bitcoin’ after promo unit error
South Korea’s Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) has demanded users return Bitcoin mistakenly credited by exchange Bithumb during a promotional crediting error. An employee intended to credit 695 users with 2,000 KRW each but entered the unit as BTC, briefly issuing roughly 620,000 BTC (~$40–44 billion) — labelled “ghost Bitcoin.” Bithumb recovered the vast majority (about 99.7%) after pausing trading; roughly ₩13 billion (~$10–11 million) worth of BTC remains unrecovered and about 1,786 BTC were sold before trading halted, of which around 93% were reclaimed. FSS Governor Lee Chan-jin said users who only confirmed receipt with the exchange will not be held at fault, but anyone who sold or liquidated the mistakenly received BTC without Bithumb’s confirmation is legally required to return the assets under unjust enrichment rules. The FSS is investigating potential breaches of the User Protection Act, will reflect lessons in the second phase of digital asset regulation, and plans targeted inspections of internal controls at other exchanges. The Financial Services Commission and FSS also agreed to grant limited investigative powers to the FSS’s capital market special judicial police with safeguards to prevent overreach. Key points for traders: the incident exposed exchange control weaknesses, recovery efforts limited trading flows temporarily, and the regulator’s enforcement stance increases legal risk for wallets that received and moved the coins.
Neutral
Short-term impact on BTC price is likely limited and neutral. The error temporarily removed exchange liquidity and prompted rapid recovery actions and trading halts that could cause transient volatility or order-book dislocations; however, the vast majority of the mistakenly issued BTC was recovered (≈99.7%), and most sold coins were reclaimed, reducing the probability of a sustained sell pressure. The regulator’s clear stance that proceeds from unauthorized disposals must be returned raises legal risk for recipients but also supports market integrity and asset recovery—a corrective signal that should ultimately be stabilizing. Longer-term implications are regulatory: the incident highlights operational risk at centralized exchanges and may prompt tighter controls and inspections, which could increase compliance costs and reduce some exchange-level execution flexibility but improve trust. For traders, expect brief episodic volatility around exchange incidents and regulatory announcements, but no direct bearish catalyst for BTC given the successful recovery and regulatory enforcement.