South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb announced on Saturday that it accidentally distributed more than $40 billion worth of Bitcoin to customers while attempting to issue promotional rewards. The error occurred on Friday and immediately caused significant operational pressure on the exchange. Bithumb said it managed to recover 99.7 percent of the 620,000 Bitcoins mistakenly sent, valued at about $44 billion. Within 35 minutes of the incident, trading and withdrawals were restricted for 695 affected users.

According to local media, the exchange had planned to give each participant at least 2,000 Korean won in cash as part of a promotional event. However, due to a technical glitch, selected users received at least 2,000 Bitcoins instead. Bithumb stated that the incident was not related to any external hacking or security breach and claimed that its system security and asset management remained intact.

Following the incident, Bitcoin prices on Bithumb temporarily dropped 17 percent to 81.1 million won before recovering to around 104.5 million won later in the evening.