According to ChainCatcher, citing the Korea Times, Bithumb, South Korea's second-largest cryptocurrency exchange, is persisting in pushing for the re-election of its current CEO, Lee Jae-won, despite facing a series of controversies and regulatory penalties. Previously, on February 6, 2026, Bithumb made a serious operational error during a promotional campaign, mistakenly issuing users approximately 15 times the exchange's actual Bitcoin holdings, totaling about 620,000 BTC. This exposed significant flaws in Bithumb's internal verification, asset management, and ledger systems. The error was discovered and contained within 35 minutes, and the exchange froze trading and withdrawals for 695 affected accounts, claiming to have recovered 99.7% of the mistakenly issued assets. However, the incident still triggered brief market panic.
The Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), under South Korea's Financial Services Commission, imposed multiple penalties on Bithumb, including a six-month suspension of some operations, a 36.8 billion won (approximately US$24 million) fine for anti-money laundering violations, a warning to CEO Lee Jae-won, and a six-month suspension of the whistleblower.
Bithumb CEO Lee Jae-won's term expires this month, and the company plans to hold a regular shareholders' meeting on March 31 to consider a proposal to extend his term for another two years. Despite significant disruptions and regulatory pressure, Bithumb has chosen to proceed with his re-election to maintain operational continuity and stability rather than reshuffle the management team. In similar previous cases, such as Upbit's CEO being reassigned to an advisory role after receiving a warning from the FIU, the management team often faced greater accountability.
