The price of Bitcoin on a Korean crypto exchange reached a level that has never been seen in a very long time – $50.

This was after traders on the platform moved to cash in on their mysterious new year’s gift which came in the form of free Bitcoins. The Korean crypto exchange, Coinzest, said that it unintentionally sent Bitcoin and other crypto coins worth roughly 5.3 million US dollars to traders.

The Korean crypto exchange was planning to hold an airdrop that was to involve We game Tokens (WGT) but traders on the exchange ended up recording higher BTC balances in their wallets.

That’s not all. Some traders even received some Korean won in the process. Knowing that it’s probably a mistake, the traders flocked the platform to sell their free BTC coins and in the process brought down the price of Bitcoin to around 50 U.S dollars.

The Korean crypto exchange blamed the mishap on a computer error. The platform said it has already fixed the server error and plans are underway to reverse the transactions so as to restore most of the wrongly sent Bitcoins. As of the time of writing, the platform had indicated that half of the entire amount wrongly sent to traders has been recovered.

However, it is still pursuing the other half although there is no official communication from the exchange on whether affected traders will be compensated.

An official from the Korean crypto exchange told Coindesk Korea that:

Abnormal transactions can be fully recognized, but the fact that a transaction has been concluded or withdrawn can be regarded as embezzlement or theft. We are going to go through the legal review and proceed with the return.

Considering that one of the platform’s co-founder was accused of embezzlement last year, do you think this could have been avoided since they were using weak computer systems?

Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.