South Korean regulators escalate investigation into Bithumb following Bitcoin erroneous payment incidents.

PANews reported on February 10th that, according to Yonhap News Agency, South Korea's Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) has upgraded its investigation into the large-scale Bitcoin mispayment incident at the Bithumb exchange from an on-site inspection to a formal audit, launching a full-scale investigation on the same day. The FSS stated that the incident is extremely serious and has deployed additional personnel to conduct a high-intensity audit, focusing on whether the exchange violated its "actual holding obligation," whether there are "ghost currencies," and internal control loopholes. The investigation will focus on why Bithumb actually held approximately 46,000 Bitcoins but mistakenly paid out 620,000 Bitcoins, as well as the asset custody and accounting consistency under its "ledger transaction" model.

Financial authorities have indicated that this incident could shake overall trust in the virtual asset market and will investigate whether the mistakenly paid Bitcoins posed a structural risk of being simultaneously withdrawn on a large scale. Furthermore, the internal approval loopholes at Bithumb that allowed such large transfers to be completed by a single person will also be a key focus of the investigation.