Bithumb has secured the first court ruling in its legal campaign to recover funds from users who sold Bitcoin mistakenly credited during a February promotional event. On Aug. 27, the Seoul Central District Court’s 90th Civil Division ordered a defendant to return approximately 194 million Korean won, or about $140,513, as unjust enrichment.
The ruling is the first among four civil lawsuits Bithumb filed in March against customers who allegedly sold the erroneously credited Bitcoin and retained the proceeds after being asked to return them. The Aug. 27 case involved the second-largest claim. The largest remaining claim is about 500 million won ($362,229), while the other two claims are roughly 14.8 million won and five million won. Combined, the reported claims total approximately 713.8 million won.
The underlying error occurred on Feb. 6, when Bithumb intended to distribute 620,000 won in total rewards during a random-box event. Instead, an employee selected Bitcoin as the payment unit, causing the exchange’s internal system to credit 620,000 BTC — then worth around $43 billion — rather than the intended won amount. The credits existed mainly on Bithumb’s internal ledger and exceeded the exchange’s actual Bitcoin holdings.
Bithumb identified the mistake after about 20 minutes and began blocking trading and withdrawals 15 minutes later. Restrictions covering 695 customers were completed within 35 minutes. Some recipients sold mistakenly credited Bitcoin before the controls took effect, briefly pushing the BTC/KRW price on Bithumb roughly 15% to 17% below the wider market.
Bithumb said it recovered more than 99% of the mistaken credits through account reversals and voluntary returns. It later reported to South Korea’s National Assembly that 99% of the 1,788 BTC sold or left unrecovered during the initial response had been recovered by March 10. The exchange pursued legal action over approximately seven Bitcoin that remained missing and sought provisional asset seizures before filing civil claims.
Judge Kim Yu-seong ruled that customers cannot retain proceeds generated from an obvious payment error. The judgment concerns civil restitution, not criminal liability, and may still be appealed.
South Korea’s Financial Services Commission also found broader weaknesses in exchange ledger reconciliation, approval systems and operational-risk controls after the incident. In April, regulators ordered exchanges to introduce automated balance reconciliation at five-minute intervals, separate accounts, automatic validity checks, third-party verification and multiple approvals for high-risk manual payments. The Financial Supervisory Service reportedly sent Bithumb an inspection opinion in early August, though no final penalty has been announced.
The next developments will be any appeal from the Aug. 27 judgment, rulings in the three remaining recovery cases and the outcome of the regulatory review. Bithumb has separately announced that it is targeting an initial public offering in 2028.
