South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb has won the first court ruling in a series of lawsuits aimed at recovering money from customers who received Bitcoin by mistake during a promotional event earlier this year.
On August 27, the Seoul Central District Court ordered one customer to repay about 194 million won, ruling that the funds were obtained through an obvious payment error. The decision is the first judgment among four separate lawsuits filed by the exchange.
The case stems from a mistake that occurred during a promotional event in February. Bithumb intended to distribute a total of 620,000 won in rewards, but an employee accidentally selected Bitcoin as the payment unit. As a result, the exchange’s internal system credited customers with 620,000 BTC instead of 620,000 won.
The error was limited to Bithumb’s internal records and did not involve an actual transfer of that amount of Bitcoin on the blockchain. The exchange discovered the mistake within minutes and quickly moved to block trading and withdrawals.
However, some users managed to sell the mistakenly credited Bitcoin before restrictions were put in place. This briefly caused Bitcoin prices on Bithumb to trade significantly below broader market levels.
Bithumb later filed lawsuits against four customers, claiming they kept proceeds generated from the error after being asked to return the funds. The total value of the claims is reported to be more than 700 million won.
The exchange said it successfully recovered most of the mistaken credits through account reversals and voluntary returns. The lawsuits focus on the remaining funds that were not recovered.
The court’s decision supports Bithumb’s position that customers should not be allowed to keep money gained from a clear operational mistake. However, the ruling can still be appealed, and the other three cases remain unresolved.
The incident also attracted the attention of South Korean regulators, who ordered cryptocurrency exchanges to strengthen their internal controls, improve balance reconciliation systems, and introduce stricter approval procedures to help prevent similar errors in the future.
