- Bithumb will compensate users affected by Tuesday's 100-minute service disruption.
- The top five South Korea exchanges have reported 89 suspensions since 2018.
- Bithumb has already been scrutinized for misleading fees, security concerns and dangerous lending practices.
South Korea's Crypto-Swap Bithumb will compensate users for a 100-minute suspension that will provide a platform that is available late Tuesday.
According to several local media reports, Bithumb said it would provide compensation to affected customers in accordance with the guidelines of the Korean digital assets Asset Alliance.
In particular, users who face unclear low-limit buy orders and fail to attempt to cancel low-limit sales orders that may have led to unintended transactions will be considered for compensation.
It's not an isolated incident in Korea
The company refrains from disclosing technical details behind the disruption of the service, citing internal security concerns, but emphasized that all emergency maintenance procedures have been completed and pledged to address the resulting damages.
The outage that began around 9:40pm local time allowed users to trade or change orders for more than an hour and a half.
Some investors joined the online community to vent their frustration.
“I thought it was that night. Beginners should never go all out with money. I just had a taste of hell. It felt like a minute,” they were quoted as saying.
At the same time, many complained that they were caught off guard during short-term trade and were unable to leave their location during unstable price movements.
These types of confusion are particularly painful in the crypto market where 24-hour trading is almost free of room for error and downtime.
For Korean crypto traders, frustration has grown beyond Bitham. Data presented by MP Lee Hun-Seung earlier this year revealed that five major exchanges in South Korea recorded a total of 89 technical obstacles between 2018 and 2024, of which 41 were reported by Bithumb alone.
Collectively, the platform paid nearly $2.74 million, most of which came from Upbit, with about $2.3 million.
Bithumb's compensation pool share is estimated at around 660 million, with other platforms such as Coinone, Korbit and Gopax reportedly not paying anything.
Despite repeated calls for tighter surveillance from lawmakers and industry observers, South Korea's crypto exchange has yet to be held to the same standards as brokerages that have a legal obligation to compensate users for infrastructure failures.
As a result, this regulatory gray area allowed these companies to define their own rules for handling claims, often leaving retail users without resorting to edge case scenarios.
Bithumb users cannot take a break
Just five months ago, in April, Bithum users rattled after the exchange issued a security warning following a major data breaches on SK Telecom, South Korea's largest mobile carrier.
Bithumb was not directly affected and had to increase security measures accordingly, but users once again left scrambling to protect their assets.
Despite the exchange seeking to move towards a brighter future, including the proposed corporate restructuring and the potential for NASDAQ IPOs, Bithumb continues to be engrossed in the controversy.
Earlier this year, Bitham was accused of misleading users about trading fees by rolling out a “dark pattern” and reportedly earning 140 billion wins for an additional fee.
These allegations ultimately sparked calls for intervention by the South Korean Fair Trade Commission and the Financial Services Commission.
Regulators also have it Examination Due to concerns over investor risk, Bithumb, which provided up to four times leverage with its crypto lending service, ultimately reduced the ratio by twice as much while capping its loan limit by 80%.
Bithumb bounced financially last year with operating profit of over 130 billion, but its reputation among users continues to be a hit.
