BlockFills crypto lender halts withdrawals

The Chicago-based institutional crypto lending firm BlockFills has halted deposits and withdrawals, citing "recent market and financial conditions" and a desire to "further the protection of clients and the firm". They've also noted the need to "restore liquidity to the platform".

Platforms limiting or halting withdrawals — particularly lending platforms — is reminiscient of the 2022 crypto crash, when falling crypto prices exposed crypto firms that had been engaging in highly risky or sometimes illegal behavior. As crypto prices fell, firms were unable to meet their loan obligations or faced margin calls, and the tightly interconnected web of lending within the crypto ecosystem often meant that one company failure cascaded into multiple more. It remains to be seen whether this is an isolated incident or the beginning of a trend as crypto prices hit revisit price lows not seen in over a year.

BlockFills claims to have more than 2,000 institutional clients globally, and boasted of facilitating more than $61 billion in transactions in 2025. The company's backers include Susquehanna Capital and CME Ventures.

Bithumb accidentally gives away $44 billion to customers

The South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb disclosed that it had accidentally given its customers more than 620,000 BTC (~$44 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 BTC (almost $140 million).

The exchange announced that they had recovered 99.7% of the erroneously awarded tokens, leaving around 1,860 BTC (~$130 million) unaccounted for.

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 $30 million hack of the Upbit crypto exchange in November 2025.