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- In total there were six Bithumb customers who brought the incident to the notice of the civil authorities.
- Victims transferred their bitcoins from the bithumb wallet to a third-party one through a function offered by the exchange
- The Seoul Court has ordered the exchange to compensate the victims for their negligence.
In November 2018, the traders of Bithumb were taken for a ride by the exchange for their bitcoins, as the operation went wrong and the customer service told them that the exchange did nothing wrong. Hence, the victims bitcoins were taken to an unknown wallet whose identity is still unknown. The Seoul Court has ordered the exchange to compensate the victims for their negligence.
Court’s Order
In one of the accidental withdrawal cases in South Korea, the country’s court has ordered Bithumb, one of the domestic biggest crypto exchanges to compensate the victims of the accident. The incident happened in 2018 and the verdict has come out against the crypto exchange recently.
The court has ordered Bithumb, the cryptocurrency exchange, to compensate the victims. In total there were six Bithumb customers who brought the incident to the notice of the civil authorities. The case was presented before the 15th Division of the Civil Agreement of the Seoul Central District Court.
Victims Complain
The customers who have been the victim of the accident complained that the misleading information has been provided by the exchange regarding withdrawing funds in November 2018. Due to the alleged chain of errors the users send the bitcoin to an unknown wallet, which led to the theft.
Accordingly, the victims transferred their bitcoins from the bithumb wallet to a third-party one. This was done through a function offered by the exchange. Judge Min Seong-Cheol who is looking over the case confirmed that the operation went wrong due to the default in the Bithumb system. The system did not transfer the funds to the third-party wallet. In fact the funds of the victims went to the wallet whose owner’s identity is still not known. The Seoul Court believed that this was wrong on the part of the exchange and the technical fault by them led to this serious accident.
Victims also informed that they were misled by the customer care executives of the Bithumb. The customer service told them that the exchange did not do anything wrong despite the fact that the company was well informed about the mistake.
The country’s IT community played a very crucial role in making this case popular in Seoul. They posted the video regarding the accident on YouTube rapidly because of the faults spotted on the video published by the victims.
Compensation
According to the judgement, the victims will be compensated at the bitcoin rate on the date the incident happened. The prices of the bitcoin were between $4,550 to $4,650 approximately. However, the victims sought $1 million compensation. This decision given by the Judge has created controversy amongst the victims. They want the court to now consider the compensation price as that of the current price of Bitcoin.
No public notice has been issued by Bithumb about the Court’s decision, yet.
With a background in journalism, Ritika Sharma has worked with many reputed media firms focusing on general news such as politics and crime. She joined The Coin Republic as a reporter for crypto, and found a great passion for cryptocurrency, Web3, NFTs and other digital assets. She spends a lot of time researching and delving deeper into these concepts around the clock, and is a strong advocate for women in STEM.
