Court Orders Bithumb Client to Return $140,400 for Accidentally Sent Bitcoins

A client of the South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb is required to return 194 million South Korean won—approximately $140,400—for accidentally sent bitcoins, which he managed to sell after the erroneous credit to his account.

Court Considers Funds Unjust Enrichment

The ruling was made by the Seoul Central District Court. It determined that the funds received by the client after selling the mistakenly credited bitcoins constitute unjust enrichment and must be returned to the exchange.

Importantly, the dispute concerned the proceeds from the sale of the assets, not the coins themselves, which may have remained in the user's account. This is already the second case won by Bithumb in a short period: the day before, the court ordered another client to return 5 million won, or about $3,620.

Regarding other claims against Bithumb, the situation is as follows:

• 2 lawsuits are still under consideration: 14.8 million won and 500 million won; approximately $10,700 and $362,000.
• 4 claims in total: around 714 million won; approximately $517,000.

How Bithumb Credited Clients Hundreds of Thousands of BTC

The error occurred in early February during the KRW coin airdrop. An exchange employee mistakenly indicated bitcoins instead of South Korean won, resulting in internal records showing a credit of 620,000 BTC across hundreds of accounts.

This data significantly exceeded Bithumb's actual reserves: the exchange had about 40,000 BTC in its wallets. Trading did not stop immediately and continued for about 40 minutes. During this time, 1,788 BTC entered the order book.

From a technical perspective, the situation was not a standard operation on the Bitcoin network: it was an error in the exchange's internal accounting, not a transfer through the UTXO model. In a broad sense, the term "Transaction (Informatics)" applies here to describe a record in the system, but it does not mean that all these coins actually passed through the blockchain.

Can Cryptocurrency Be Returned After an Erroneous Transfer?

The possibility of a return depends on the nature of the error that occurred. If the transfer has already been confirmed on the blockchain, it is usually impossible to cancel it like a bank payment: the network does not reverse transactions at the request of the sender. Exceptions may be possible before the actual sending— for example, if the withdrawal on the exchange is still in a pending status and can be canceled through the account or support.

• Transfer to an existing address: funds can only be returned with the participation of the recipient, service support, or through legal procedures.
• Transfer to a nonexistent or incorrect address: the wallet often will not allow sending funds, but if the address is formally valid and belongs to no one, access to the coins may be lost.
• Transfer to the wrong network: there is a chance of recovery if the address is controlled by the same owner or the service supports manual recovery of such funds.
• Funds are usually lost irretrievably if there is no private key, seed phrase, access to the required network, or the ability to contact the recipient.

What to Do If the Transfer Did Not Arrive

First, check whether the transaction was actually sent to the network. For Bitcoin, a TXID is needed: it is copied from the wallet or exchange, pasted into a blockchain explorer, and the status, number of confirmations, recipient address, amount, and fee are checked.

• Check the withdrawal status in the wallet or on the exchange.
• Verify the address, network, and amount of the transfer.
• Find the transaction by TXID in the blockchain explorer.
• If there are few confirmations, wait for the network to process it.
• If the address or network is chosen incorrectly, immediately contact the support of the service through which the funds were sent.
• If the coins went to a private recipient, the only practical way is to contact them and ask for the return of the transfer.

How to Reduce the Risk of Errors When Sending Cryptocurrency

Errors in transfers often occur due to haste, incorrect network selection, or an old address from the clipboard. Before sending, it is better to do a quick check.

• Verify the entire address or at least the first and last characters.
• Check the network before sending, especially when withdrawing from an exchange.
• For large amounts, first send a small test transfer.
• Do not enter the seed phrase on suspicious sites and do not provide it to support.
• Keep backups of seed phrases, hardware wallet records, and paper wallets in a secure place.
• If you need to find a lost Bitcoin wallet, check old devices, backups, cloud archives, flash drives, and records with seed phrases.

Regulators of the Republic of Korea Take Notice of the Glitch

Bithumb was able to cancel most of the erroneous credits on the same day. On March 10, the exchange reported that it managed to recover 99.7% of the bitcoins accidentally sent to clients. In April, the platform moved to legal measures to recover the remaining amount.

The incident caught the attention of the country's financial authorities. For regulators, the Republic of Korea signaled problems in the cryptocurrency exchange control system. The Financial Supervisory Service proposed to enhance oversight through several measures.

• Use automated tools to detect suspicious transactions.
• Analyze data by the second.
• Analyze data by the minute.

The incident showed how costly a glitch in the exchange's internal infrastructure can be, even if the cryptocurrency itself did not actually leave the exchange's wallets. For a market where Ethereum and other assets trade alongside Bitcoin, the cost of an error is quickly measured not only in South Korean won but also in US dollar equivalents.