South Korea's Central Bank Proposes Crypto Circuit Breakers After Bithumb Error

• Bithumb error sent 620,000 BTC instead of 620,000 won, triggering a sharp price drop and losses.
• South Korea’s central bank urges circuit breakers on crypto exchanges to curb extreme price swings.
• BOK flags weak internal controls in crypto compared to traditional finance, raising risk concerns.

South Korea’s central bank is pushing for stock market-style circuit breakers at cryptocurrency exchanges after a single employee error at Bithumb in February sent the equivalent of 60 trillion won in Bitcoin to customers who were only supposed to receive prizes worth 620,000 won.

According to reports, the Bank of Korea laid out its case in its 2025 Payment and Settlement Report published Monday, calling the Bithumb incident a clear example of what happens when crypto exchanges operate without the internal safeguards that banks and securities firms are legally required to maintain.

On February 6, a Bithumb employee distributing event prizes entered Bitcoin as the unit of payment instead of Korean won. The result was 620,000 Bitcoin going out the door instead of Bitcoin worth 620,000 won.

Some recipients immediately sold the wrongly credited coins in large volumes. Bitcoin prices on Bithumb plunged. Other users suffered losses through panic selling and automatic sell orders. Bitcoin-backed loans were forcibly liquidated.

The exchange took 20 minutes to recognize the incident and another 20 minutes to respond. By then, the damage was done.

“The primary cause was the lack of internal control systems designed to prevent such operational risks. Compared to traditional financial institutions, the crypto asset industry has weaker internal controls and lower regulatory standards,” the BOK said.

The BOK is now calling for two specific changes. First, crypto exchanges should implement a circuit breaker modeled on the Korea Exchange system, which halts trading for 20 minutes when the benchmark index drops more than 8% from the previous session and holds that level for one minute. Applied to crypto, this would block trading automatically during abnormal price movements caused by errors or bulk orders.

Second, exchanges must build real-time IT systems capable of automatically verifying whether internal ledgers match actual blockchain balances at all times, not once a day.

Additionally, South Korea’s Financial Services Commission has separately mandated that all Korean crypto exchanges implement asset-matching systems by the end of May 2026 and disclose balances daily.

Related: South Korea Orders 5-Minute Crypto Audits After $56B Bithumb Error