A cryptocurrency firm transferred more than $40 billion worth of bitcoin to users by mistake, briefly prompting a selloff on the platform.
South Korean company Bithumb apologised for yesterday's error and said it had recovered 99.7 per cent of the missing 620,000 bitcoins.
Trading and withdrawals were restricted for the 695 affected customers within 35 minutes of the erroneous distribution.
It is understood Bithumb was meant to send about 2,000 won ($1.37) to each user as part of a promotion, but instead transferred roughly 2,000 bitcoins per person.
The error comes after bitcoin crashed to as low as $60,000 this week, losing half of its value in just four months.
This swiped out gains sparked by US President Donald Trump's presidential election victory in November 2024.
A spokesperson for Bithumb said: 'We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience caused to our customers due to the confusion that occurred during the distribution process of this (promotional) event.'
Bithumb was meant to send about 2,000 won ($1.37) to each user as part of a promotion, but instead transferred roughly 2,000 bitcoins per person.
The platform admitted the error briefly caused a 'sharp volatility' in bitcoin prices as some recipients sold the tokens.
However, Bithumb added that it had managed to bring the situation under control within five minutes.
Its charts showed the token's prices briefly went down 17 percent to 81.1 million won on the platform late on Friday.
In a separate statement released later on Saturday, Bithumb said some trades were executed at unfavourable prices during the incident on Friday.
The platform said it would compensate affected customers, covering the full price difference as well as a 10 per cent bonus.
Bithumb estimated losses at about 1 billion won.
The platform earlier stressed that the incident was 'unrelated to external hacking or security breaches'.
As the sell-off gathered pace this week, key names, including Michael Burry, joined the chorus warning against cryptocurrencies.
Burry, who predicted the 2008 financial crisis, said bitcoin is now 'exposed as a completely speculative asset' and the falling price could trigger a 'death spiral'.
Bitcoin is touted as a hedge against volatility, but it declined in tandem with other assets, including precious metals and tech stocks this week.
Richard Farr, chief market strategist at Pivotus Partners, set a price of target of zero for bitcoin and said the cryptocurrency had failed to function as a hedge and operates as 'a speculative instrument correlated to the Nasdaq.'