Bithumb’s ‘fat finger’ sends 40 billion worth of Bitcoin to customers

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Last Updated on 9 February 2026 by CryptoTips.eu

Bithumb, a well-known South Korean crypto platform, wanted to attract new customers to its business and promised everyone who signed up during a certain period that they would receive some 2,000 Korean won (just over 1 euro). Due to a so-called “fat finger trade” Bithumb ended up sending them 2,000 Bitcoins each. 700 of the platform’s customers briefly became multimillionaires. The error has since been rectified.

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Fat finger trade

The so-called fat finger trade, in which a human error on a keyboard causes a huge loss for a company or bank, isn’t exactly new in South Korea (and Japan). These errors likely occur more frequently in Asia due to the culture of extremely long workdays and minimal sleep. The most well-known is the Samsung fat finger, which disrupted the South Korean stock market in 2018. The company had originally intended to pay a small dividend to all its employees, but a “fat finger” suddenly resulted in billions of new shares being issued (and transferred to the employees).

It took about 37 minutes for the error to be discovered, after which trading in Samsung shares on the Kospi (the local stock exchange in Seoul) was halted. During those 37 minutes, 21 of the company’s employees had converted all their new wealth into cash, netting them approximately 8 million euros each. Samsung subsequently recovered the money through a lawsuit.

99%

This time, it was Bithumb that made the mistake of sending Bitcoins instead of Won to approximately 695 new customers. They briefly felt like multimillionaires, but (fortunately for Bithumb) couldn’t convert the cryptocurrencies into fiat.

Bithumb has since recovered approximately 99% of all Bitcoins they sent.

Jeroen Kok

Jeroen is one of the lead copywriters on Cryptotips.eu and discusses all recent events in the crypto market. This includes news updates, but also price analyzes and more. He developed his passion for cryptocurrency during the bull run in 2017. He has learned a lot since then. The combination of cryptocurrency and creative writing is perfect for Jeroen and an excellent way to share his knowledge with a wide audience. Find me on LinkedIn / jeroen@cryptotips.eu
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