Coinnest, the South Korean cryptocurrency exchange, airdropped over $5 million in Bitcoin to its clients by mistake.

It’s normal for people to make a mistake. Forgetting the time when the movie started or not getting milk at the grocery store is quite common. Then there are colossal mistakes that almost take your breath away.

My father, a machinist, once told me of a co-worker that messed up a sheet of alloy being machined to be part of a jet engine when he lost concentration to yell at the guy next to him to shut up. That piece of alloy had a price tag of over $250,000, and this was back in the 1980s. In a big cryptocurrency blunder, a South Korean exchange messed up and accidentally airdropped over $5 million in bitcoins to its clients.

Bitcoin Blunder

The exchange in question is Coinnest, and their executives are probably having a lot of sleepless nights right now. A major mistake occurred last week when the exchange had planned on airdropping We Game Tokens (WGT) to its clients.

However, the plans of mice and mine often go awry. A computer error caused an airdrop of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies worth 6 billion won ($5.3 million) instead. It’s reported that some clients of Coinnest even got Korean won credited to their account.

Needless to say, this caused some issues.

Coinnest Rolling Back Transactions

The exchange had rectified the problem by January 19th, but they’re still dealing with the consequences. On the plus side, they’ve managed to get back half of the total cryptocurrency sent out by mistake. Coinnest is planning on rolling back transactions in order to recover the other half. Coinnest is also asking clients who received won during the airdrop to return the money.

However, there are some issues that the exchange will have to deal with. First, a number of clients decided to sell off their free Bitcoin after the airdrop. The selling frenzy that took place apparently forced the price of BTC down to $50 at one point. It’ll be interesting to see how this is handled.

In addition, there are no announced plans on compensating traders who may have lost funds due to the computer issue. You can bet there is some resentment if the exchange’s problem caused people to miss out on some wheeling and dealing.

It seems that crypto exchanges in South Korea are always an adventure. Last year saw the high-profile hacks of a number of exchanges. More recently, two executives from the Komid exchange were sentenced to several years of jail time for fraud as they had faked artificially high trade volumes in order to enrich themselves.

What would you do if an exchange suddenly airdropped you some BTC? Let us know in the comments below.

Images courtesy of Pixabay.