00:01South Korea's BitThumb crypto exchange has apologized for a $44 billion mistake
00:06after accidentally giving away 620,000 bitcoins as part of a customer reward campaign.
00:12The company said it had restricted trading and withdrawals for the 695 affected customers
00:16shortly after the error on Friday, and that it had recovered 99.7% of the bitcoins as of Saturday night.
00:22The exchange had planned to distribute small cash rewards of 2,000 Korean won worth about $1.4
00:28or more to each user as part of a promotional event.
00:31But instead, winners received at least 2,000 bitcoins each, media reports said.
00:36In a statement, BitThumb said the incident was unrelated to external hacking or security breaches
00:41and there were no problems with system security or customer asset management.
00:45But South Korea's financial regulators, including the Financial Services Commission,
00:49said the incident has exposed the vulnerabilities and risks of virtual assets.
00:54After an emergency meeting, the regulators said in a statement
00:57they would review BitThumb and other crypto exchanges' internal control systems
01:01as well as their holdings and operations of virtual assets.
01:04And if irregularities are found, an on-site inspection would be launched, the statement said.
01:09Bitcoin is the world's largest cryptocurrency.
01:12Charts from BitThumb Exchange show Bitcoin prices briefly slumped 17% on Friday evening after the incident,
01:18a while later recovered.
01:20It was expected to be the result of the fact that the Amazigh Foundation had been
01:24referred to as the Palau on Friday evening after the incident but later recovered.
