A South Korean cryptocurrency exchange accidentally gave away more than $40bn (£32bn) worth of bitcoin to customers, briefly making them multi-millionaires. It had planned to give customers a small cash reward of 2,000 won - $1.37 - but instead gave them 2,000 bitcoins on Friday.

The platform, Bithumb, apologized for the error, adding that it quickly realized its mistake and recovered almost all the missing tokens. It said it had restricted trading and withdrawals for the 695 affected customers within 35 minutes of the glitch.

The company stated that it had recovered 99.7% of the 620,000 bitcoins mistakenly sent, explaining that this matter had nothing to do with external hacking or security breaches. In an emergency meeting on Saturday, South Korea's financial regulator indicated it would look into the incident, with the possibility of formal investigations into any sign of illegal activity.

Bithumb vowed to cooperate with regulators, emphasizing that it would prioritize 'customer trust and peace of mind' over external growth. The company plans to pay 20,000 won ($13.66) in compensation to all customers who were using the platform at the time and will waive trading fees among other measures. Bithumb is also improving verification systems and introducing AI to detect abnormal transactions.

The incident could incite discussions on tighter regulatory controls in the financial sector, reminiscent of an earlier event where Citigroup mistakenly credited $81 trillion to a customer’s account, which was corrected shortly after the error was discovered.}