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"path": "/story/26/02/10/1619231/a-bitcoin-blunder-for-the-ages-40-billion-accidentally-given-away?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed",
"publishedAt": "2026-02-10T17:05:52.755Z",
"site": "https://slashdot.org",
"tags": [
"bitcoin",
"Read more of this story"
],
"textContent": "An anonymous reader shares a report: The hundreds of prize payouts were mostly just a few bucks each, part of a promotional campaign by a South Korean cryptocurrency exchange. The total reward pot: 620,000 Korean won, or about $425. Then came a colossal mistake. A staffer for Bithumb, South Korea's No. 2 crypto exchange, didn't distribute 620,000 Korean won. Rather, the prizes, due to an input error, emerged in a different currency: 620,000 bitcoins, valued at more than $40 billion. That meant a winner who should have received a sum of 2,000 won -- enough to buy a cheap cup of coffee -- reaped, at least momentarily, more than $120 million in bitcoins. Enough recipients sought to sell or withdraw bitcoin that the market sank 17%, before Bithumb halted transactions after roughly 30 minutes. Those affected included investors who had held bitcoin before the botched giveaway. The losses totaled about $685,000, Bithumb says. The company has since said it has reversed the transactions or had recipients voluntarily return more than 99% of the misdistributed bitcoins. But Bithumb is still trying to convince users who during the brief window of trading managed to offload more than 100 bitcoins, valued at roughly $9 million, to give back the equivalent funds.\n\n \n\nRead more of this story at Slashdot.",
"title": "A Bitcoin Blunder for the Ages: $40 Billion Accidentally Given Away",
"updatedAt": "2026-02-10T17:00:00.000Z"
}