The South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb disclosed that it had accidentally given its customers more than 620,000&nbsp;BTC (~$44&nbsp;billion) in a promotional event gone wrong. Intending to reward each customer with at least ₩2,000 (~$1.40), the exchange accidentally rewarded each customer at least 2,000&nbsp;BTC (almost $140&nbsp;million).<p>The exchange announced that they had recovered 99.7% of the erroneously awarded tokens, leaving around 1,860&nbsp;BTC (~$130&nbsp;million) unaccounted for.</p><p>The incident has drawn further scrutiny from Korean regulators, who said that the error "has exposed the vulnerabilities and risks of virtual assets." Regulatory agencies in the country had already been cracking down on crypto firms following a <a href="https://www.web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=upbit-hack" target="_blank">$30&nbsp;million hack of the Upbit crypto exchange</a> in November 2025.</p>

"South Korean crypto firm accidentally sends $44 billion in bitcoins to users"

Bithumb giveaway error

Bithumb accidentally gives away $44&nbsp;billion to customers

Hackers exploited a bug in smart contracts deployed by the defi protocol CrossCurve to steal an estimated $3&nbsp;million across multiple blockchains. The thief was able to spoof cross-chain messages, causing the CrossCurve <button class="define-target" id="bridge">bridge</button> to release assets not belonging to them.<p>CrossCurve took a conciliatory tone in on-chain messages sent to the thief, writing, "These tokens were wrongfully taken from users due to a smart contract exploit. We do not believe this was intentional on your part, and there is no indication of malicious intent." (Who among us hasn't accidentally stolen millions of dollars?) However, they warned, they planned to escalate to working with law enforcement and blockchain security firms to investigate and prosecute the theft if the funds were not returned within 72 hours.</p>

"CrossCurve Threatens Legal Action After $3M Cross-Chain Bridge Exploit"

Event	Date	Amount More info	Recovered More info
Bithumb giveaway error	February 7, 2026	$44,000,000,000	$43,868,000,000
CrossCurve users exploited for around $3 million	February 1, 2026	$3,000,000