Bithumb

Bithumb is a South Korean cryptocurrency exchange.[1][2] Founded in 2014, Bithumb Korea has 8 million registered users, 1 million mobile app users, and a current cumulative transaction volume has exceeded USD $1 trillion.[3]

Bithumb
Founded2014
Websitebithumb.com

History

In October 2018, BK Global Consortium signed a deal to buy a majority share of BTC Holding Co. which is Bithumb's largest investor.[4]

On January 22, 2019, OTC-listed holding company Blockchain Industries signed a binding letter of intent to merge with Bithumb on or before March 1, 2019. The plan is to form a new publicly traded entity called the Blockchain Exchange Alliance (BXA) that would ‘up-list’ on either the New York Stock Exchange or NASDAQ and make BXA the first major cryptocurrency exchange to go public.[5]

On April 11, 2019, Bithumb announced a net loss of KRW205.5 billion (US$180 million) in 2018, a sharp turnaround from the KRW427.2 billion profit in 2017, despite 2018's sales rising 17.5% to KRW391.7 million. The company blamed the loss on the sharp decline in the price of cryptocurrencies and reduced trading volume.[6]

Controversy

In June 2017, hackers stole user information from a Bithumb employee's personal computer.[7]

In January 2018, Bithumb was raided by the government for alleged tax evasion.[8] They were found not guilty, but still had to pay nearly $28 million in back taxes.[9]

In June 2018, approximately $32 million of cryptocurrency was stolen from Bithumb in a hack.[10]

In January 2019, 30 out of 340 total Bithumb employees were laid off in response to declining trading volume and profits in 2018.[11]

On March 29, 2019, Bithumb said that it was hacked. It pointed its fingers at insiders. Nearly $20 million worth of EOS and Ripple tokens were estimated to have been stolen.[12]

On September 2, 2020, Bithumb was reported in local Korean news that the Bithumb exchange was raided by the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency's Intelligent Crime Investigation Unit. According to the report, the search and seizure is related to suspicion of investment fraud.[13]

References
  1. Park, Ga-young (2019-01-17). "Crypto exchange Bithumb scales down on poor market conditions". The Korea Herald. Archived from the original on 2020-07-25. Retrieved 2020-07-25.
  2. Kim, Chang Yeon; Lee, Kyungho (2018). "Risk Management to Cryptocurrency Exchange and Investors Guidelines to Prevent Potential Threats". 2018 International Conference on Platform Technology and Service (PlatCon). Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. pp. 1–6. doi:10.1109/PlatCon.2018.8472760. ISBN 978-1-5386-4710-3. S2CID 52902712. Retrieved 2020-07-25.
  3. "Bithumb Global Announces "Next-Generation" Digital Asset Exchange". GlobeNewswire (Press release). October 1, 2019. Retrieved August 10, 2020.
  4. "Plastic Surgeon Buys $352 Million Stake in South Korea Crypto Exchange". Bloomberg. October 11, 2018.
  5. Rooney, Kate (22 January 2019). "One of the world's largest crypto exchanges looks to go public in U.S. in reverse merger". www.cnbc.com. Retrieved 23 January 2019.
  6. Bo-uen, Kim (11 April 2019). "Bithumb suffers W205 bil. net loss on falling bitcoin". koreatimes. Retrieved 11 April 2019.
  7. "One of the Biggest Ethereum and Bitcoin Exchanges Got Hacked". Fortune. July 5, 2017.
  8. "Authorities raid South Korea's largest cryptocurrency exchanges". CNBC. January 10, 2018.
  9. "Korea's No. 2 digital coin exchange Bithumb slapped with W30b taxes". The Investor. January 10, 2018.
  10. "Korea's major crypto exchange Bithumb hacked; coins worth $32 million stolen". The Korean Times. June 20, 2018.
  11. "Korea's Bithumb sheds employees by 10% as it takes digital money business overseas". Pulse by Maeil Business News Korea. January 17, 2019.
  12. Cimpanu, Catalin (30 March 2019). "Bithumb cryptocurrency exchange hacked a third time in two years". ZDNet. Retrieved 6 June 2019.
  13. "[단독] 국내 1위 암호화폐거래소 '빗썸' 전격 압수수색" [Exclusive Search and seizure of]. Seoul Newspaper (in Korean). 2020-09-02. Retrieved 2020-09-15.
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