**Bithumb Confirms Reward Payout Error after Abnormal Bitcoin Trades**

South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb has confirmed that an internal error led to a reward payout mistake during a promotional event, causing brief price dislocations on the platform. The company stressed that no customer assets were lost in the incident.

In a statement released on Friday, Bithumb explained that an "abnormal amount" of Bitcoin was credited to some user accounts as part of the promotional event, resulting in sharp price fluctuations on the exchange. However, the company quickly restricted the affected accounts through internal controls, allowing market prices to stabilize within minutes and preventing any chain liquidations.

According to Bithumb, the incident was unrelated to any hacking or security breach and did not result in losses to customer assets. The company confirmed that trading, deposits, and withdrawals are operating normally, with customer funds remaining safely managed. To prevent similar errors from occurring in the future, Bithumb has pledged to transparently disclose follow-up actions.

While Bithumb has not disclosed the exact amount involved, several users on X (formerly Twitter) claimed that some accounts were erroneously credited with roughly 2,000 Bitcoin (BTC). However, this claim remains unverified at present. The news comes after Bithumb announced in January that it had identified approximately $200 million in dormant customer assets spread across 2.6 million inactive accounts as part of a recovery campaign.

Bithumb currently carries a trust score of 7 out of 10 on CoinGecko and reported roughly $2.2 billion in 24-hour trading volume at the time of writing. The exchange has faced scrutiny for operational issues, including price volatility and restrictions on user accounts, which have affected users during routine activity and periods of market stress.

**Operational Challenges at Centralized Cryptocurrency Exchanges**

Centralized cryptocurrency exchanges have faced significant operational challenges in recent years, affecting users during routine activity and periods of market stress. In June, Coinbase acknowledged that restrictions on user accounts had been a major issue for the exchange and claimed it had reduced unnecessary account freezes by 82% following upgrades to its machine-learning models and internal infrastructure.

During the October 10 market sell-off that triggered billions of dollars in liquidations, Binance faced user complaints that technical issues prevented some traders from exiting positions at peak volatility. Although Binance attributed the liquidations primarily to broader market conditions rather than internal failures, the exchange later distributed approximately $728 million in compensation to users affected by the disruptions.