Seoul: Bithumb, one of South Korea's crypto exchanges, announced that it has successfully recovered nearly all of the 620,000 bitcoins that were mistakenly sent to users, which had briefly impacted the bitcoin price.

According to Yonhap News Agency, the error occurred when 620,000 bitcoins were inadvertently sent to 249 users participating in a promotional event at around 7 p.m. on Friday. This mistake resulted in an average distribution of 2,490 bitcoins-equivalent to 244 billion won (US$166 million)-per user. The exchange reacted by halting transactions and withdrawals from affected users' accounts at 7:40 p.m.

Bithumb reported that it managed to recover 618,212 bitcoins immediately following the incident and has since successfully recouped 93 percent of the 1,788 bitcoins that users had sold. However, 125 bitcoins remain unrecovered.

The error was attributed to a Bithumb employee who mistakenly input "BTC" as the payment unit instead of "Korean won" when issuing the rewards for the promotional event. This mishap led to a temporary decline in bitcoin prices on Bithumb as users rushed to sell the bitcoins they had received.

The company has estimated customer losses stemming from this error to be approximately 1 billion won. Transactions conducted under unfavorable conditions were identified, prompting Bithumb to announce plans to compensate affected customers by covering the full price difference and offering an additional 10 percent bonus.

CEO Lee Jae-won has publicly apologized for the incident and pledged to "take full responsibility" for the mistake.

In response to the situation, South Korea's financial watchdog has dispatched personnel to investigate the aftermath of the incident at Bithumb. The Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) aims to assess the crypto exchange's user protection measures and the potential for a complete recovery of the erroneously distributed bitcoins.