The incident occurred during the distribution of rewards as part of the Random Box promotional campaign, whose goal was to attract new users and encourage the activity of existing clients, where winners were supposed to receive amounts ranging from 2000 to 50,000 won. According to preliminary data, an intern  South Korean crypto exchange Bithumb confused the currency units during manual or semi-automatic distribution of funds. Instead of the intended 2000 won (which is roughly equivalent to 105 rubles at the current rate), the system sent the lucky recipients 1 BTC. As a result:


  • About 240 people became involuntary owners of a large capital.
  • The total amount of mistakenly sent funds amounted to 2000 BTC.
  • The market value of the withdrawn assets at the time of the incident was estimated at approximately 10.5 billion rubles.

Immediately after receiving the unexpected bonuses, some users began mass-converting cryptocurrency into fiat and withdrawing funds. This triggered an instant reaction on Bithumb's internal market in Seoul: due to the excess supply, the bitcoin price on this platform showed an abnormal drop of 10% compared with global quotes on other exchanges.