According to foreign media reports, the Bank of Korea said in its annual settlement report that cryptocurrency exchanges should consider introducing circuit breaker measures to curb abnormal trading and respond to sudden market volatility. It noted that the absence of such mechanisms was a primary cause of the recent bitcoin transfer incident at Bithumb, the second-largest cryptocurrency exchange in S Korea.

The central bank attributed the issue to a lack of internal compliance measures, stating that compared with traditional financial institutions, the virtual asset industry has weaker internal controls and lighter regulation.

Bithumb earlier admitted flaws in its internal system, which allowed employees to distribute bitcoin without supervisor approval or verification by the internal monitoring department. The incident was caused by an input error by an employee, resulting in the unintended distribution of 620,000 bitcoins worth approximately KRW60 trillion to users as promotional rewards, instead of the originally planned KRW620,000. Following the incident, some users heavily sold the mistakenly credited bitcoins, leading to a brief sharp plunge in bitcoin prices on Bithumb. (ha/j)

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