A South Korean court ordered one of the largest domestic crypto exchanges to compensate victims of an “accidental withdrawal” incident in 2018. Bithumb has been instructed to pay into an unknown wallet for customers who have withdrawn their Bitcoin money.
Funds ended up in a wallet with an unknown owner
According to Fn News, six Bithumb clients have taken the case to the 15th Division of the Seoul Central District Court Civil Agreement. They said the exchange provided them with misinformation about withdrawing funds in November 2018.
Due to the alleged chain of errors, users have sent the Bitcoin (BTC) to an unknown wallet. The victims wanted to transfer their cryptos from the Bithumb wallet to a third-party wallet through a function offered by the exchange.
However, according to Judge Min Seong-cheol, the operation failed because Bithumb’s system did not transfer funds to a third-party wallet. In reality, their funds ended up in a wallet, the identity of which is still unknown, according to the Seoul Court.
Victims said Bithumb customer service advised them that the replacement did not do anything wrong, even though the company was aware that an error had occurred.
The case gained nationwide popularity thanks to a video posted on Youtube. The South Korean IT community quickly made the video viral due to the errors in the video posted by the victims.
Victim compensation creates controversy
Judge Min commented during the trial:
It is difficult to say that the defendant has fulfilled his pension obligations under the paid lease, for example not fulfilling the obligation to verify the identity of the withdrawal address requested by the plaintiffs and the withdrawal address transmitted to the defendant’s server.
Originally, the victims requested $ 1 million in compensation, but the judge decided to provide compensation equal to the amount of bitcoin at the time of the incident (around $ 4,550 to $ 4,650). That decision sparked controversy among the victims considering today’s Bitcoin prices.
At the time of going to press, Bithumb has not made a public statement on the court’s decision.
What do you think of the court’s decision? Let us know in the comments below.
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