South Korea's FSS Launches Formal Investigation into Bithumb's "Ghost Bitcoin" Mispayment Incident
According to Yonhap News, South Korea's Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) has escalated the investigation into Bithumb's Bitcoin mispayment incident to a formal audit. Previously, Bithumb mistakenly distributed approximately 620,000 Bitcoins due to employee operational errors, far exceeding its actual holdings. The investigation focuses on:
• Whether there was a violation of the "actual holding obligation" (actual assets must match the ledger);
• The "ghost currency" issue (assets generated out of nowhere under ledger-based transaction models);
• Internal control vulnerabilities (such as single-person approval for large transfers, no multi-level reviews);
• Whether the misissued assets and large-scale withdrawals pose equivalent systemic risks.
The incident triggered a brief market crash, and 99.7% of the mistakenly issued BTC has been recovered. Bithumb has promised to compensate for the difference and provide an additional 10% compensation.
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