The Korea Exchange, Bitumb, had its first first first instance results in a civil recovery arising from the wrongful issuance of bitcoin. On August 27, the Seoul Central District Court ordered an accused person to return approximately 194 million won, finding that the misdisposed realization of the assets constituted an undue gain.
First verdict landed.
The case was the first judgement by Bitumb following the indictment of four users in March. The exchange argued that the users had completed the sale after the accounts had been erroneously recorded in bitcoin and retained the relevant cash after the Platform had requested its return.
The total amount of the four claims disclosed is approximately 714 million won, of which this judgement corresponds to the second largest. The remaining 3 cases, amounting to approximately 500 million won, 148 million won and 5 million won, have not yet been announced.
The accident was due to a mistake in the reward unit.
The incident took place on 6 February. Bithumb had planned to award a total of 620,000 won in a random incentive event, but employees had mispicked payment units to bitcoin during their operation, resulting in 620,000 BTCs being recorded in the platform ' s internal system.
These errors, mainly in the Bithumb internal books, were not fully transferred to the Bitcoin block chain, and were much larger than the amount of bitcoin actually held by the platform. Bithumb subsequently indicated that the platform discovered anomalies in about 20 minutes and began to restrict transactions and cash withdrawals in 15 minutes, and to complete the 695 users limit in 35 minutes.
However, a number of users have sold bitcoin erroneously before the restrictions came into effect, resulting in BTC/KRW on the Bitumb platform, which was once about 17 per cent lower than the external market.
Regulatory change is still under way
Bithumb previously stated that most of the relevant assets had been recovered by the Platform through tumbling and the active return of the users. The company subsequently reported to the Korean Congress that, as at 10 March, 99 per cent of the 1788 bitcoin initially sold or not recovered had been recovered, and some 7 bitcoin were still missing.
In addition to civil proceedings, the Korean regulatory authorities have also pushed forward after the accident. In April, the Korea Financial Services Commission requested the exchange to establish an automatic reconciliation mechanism every five minutes and to strengthen multiple approvals, stand-alone accounts, automated verification and third-party review of high-risk manual payments.
At present, this judgement is still in first instance and is subject to subsequent appeal. The Korea Financial Supervisory Authority reportedly issued an inspection opinion to Bithumb in early August, and the final sentence has not yet been published.