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Bank of Korea Urges Crypto Circuit Breakers After Bithumb Bitcoin Issuance Error

Bank of Korea Urges Crypto Circuit Breakers After Bithumb Bitcoin Issuance Error

According to the Bank of Korea’s April 13 payments and settlement report, the central bank called for circuit breaker-like safeguards after Bithumb’s rewards input error involved Bitcoin units instead of won.

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Fact Check
The core claim is well supported by fetched reporting. The Newsis article "한은, 빗썸 오지급에 \"가상자산 서킷브레이커 도입 검토해야\"" directly states that the Bank of Korea's 2025 payments report discussed the Feb. 6 Bithumb incident and recommended safeguards similar to Korea Exchange circuit breakers, plus dual confirmation and real-time reconciliation. This is independently echoed by the fetched PANews article "韩国央行：为防范Bithumb误发比特币事件，应考虑在加密行业引入熔断机制 | PANews" and the fetched CoinPost article "韓国銀行、約62万ビットコイン誤配布受け仮想通貨にサーキットブレーカー導入を提言." Search results also surfaced the official Bank of Korea page "2025년도 지급결제보고서 | 간행물 | 한국은행 홈페이지 - bok.or.kr" and a Yonhap report with matching details. The only limitation is that the official BOK report page was found via search but not fetched directly in this run, so the exact report wording is not directly quoted from the primary document. Even so, the consistency across multiple sources makes the statement very likely true.
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Summary

The Bank of Korea urged stronger protections for South Korea’s cryptocurrency market after Bithumb mistakenly issued 620,000 Bitcoin in a February operational error. According to Newsis, the central bank’s payments and settlement report released April 13 said the mistake involved rewards that were intended to be worth about 620,000 won but were entered as Bitcoin units. The Bank of Korea said the crypto industry needs a circuit breaker-like mechanism to address such errors and reduce potential market disruption.

Terms & Concepts
  • Circuit breaker: A market safeguard that pauses or restricts trading during extreme volatility or abnormal activity to help prevent disorderly market moves.
  • Bitcoin: A decentralized digital currency and blockchain-based asset used for peer-to-peer value transfer without a central issuer.