Exchange Error: $130 Million Instead of 2,000 Won

The crypto market witnessed one of those rare moments when the phrase “employee mistake” suddenly turns into a financial catastrophe on the scale of a nation. South Korean exchange Bithumb, according to reports on X, found itself at the center of an absurd incident: one employee allegedly accidentally sent users 2,000 BTC

instead of 2,000 won. The difference between those numbers is roughly the same as the gap between a coffee shop tip and the budget of a small country. Instead of a gift bonus worth $1.3, users received around $130 million. And if anyone thinks people in such a situation would spend much time reflecting on morality and fairness, the crypto market quickly reminded everyone: decisions here are made faster than the order book can refresh.

Almost immediately after the “airdrop,” panic began – but not among users, rather within the exchange itself. The lucky recipients, suddenly turned into multimillionaires, started selling the received bitcoins straight into the market, literally smashing through orders in the book. As a result, on Bithumb the price of BTC briefly traded about 10% below the broader market level.

One user, according to rumors, managed to dump the entire 2,000 BTC at once, which looks like a classic crypto сценаріо: “woke up an ordinary person, went to bed after the biggest trade of their life.”

This episode instantly went viral because it highlights how fragile infrastructure remains even at major exchanges. When a single numerical error can trigger price distortions of десятки відсотків and create millions of dollars of market pressure, it becomes clear: crypto still operates in a mode where “everything rests on good faith and the Enter key.”

Bithumb itself has not yet officially commented on the situation. Perhaps the legal department is currently calculating damages, security teams are tracking transactions, and management is thinking about how to explain to regulators that this was not “mass fraud,” but simply human error in the worst possible form.

A separate question concerns the fate of the employee who made the mistake. One can only imagine their состояние, because sending users $130 million instead of $1.3 is not just a typo – it is a билет into crypto market history that nobody wanted to buy.

The Bithumb incident is yet another reminder that in crypto you can sometimes lose money in a second, and sometimes… receive it by accident. But both usually end the same way: panic, investigations, and yet another lesson that even the biggest exchanges remain vulnerable to the most dangerous technology in the world – human carelessness.