Hacking Attack or Human Error?
The South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb faced a serious incident - due to a technical glitch, it accidentally gave away Bitcoin worth around $43 billion to its users. This is 95 times the daily trading volume of the exchange.
The error was quickly corrected, but not without consequences - some users managed to take advantage of the situation and sell the received Bitcoins, which led to a temporary drop in the quotes of the main cryptocurrency.
Although such incidents are not uncommon in the crypto industry, the Bithumb case is particularly noteworthy for the scale of the error. For a platform with a daily turnover of only about $450 million, giving away $43 billion to clients is a real disaster that could have completely paralyzed its operations.
Experts believe that the incident is more likely the result of human error rather than a hacking attack. Apparently, the exchange's system had a critical bug that allowed users to withdraw Bitcoins without restrictions. Such errors are unacceptable for major market players, and the Bithumb case will be a good lesson for all cryptocurrency exchanges - they need to thoroughly test their systems and constantly improve their security measures.