South Korea's FSS Initiates Sanctions on Bithumb Over 620K 'Ghost' BTC Ledger Error

South Korea’s Financial Supervisory Service has launched sanction proceedings against Bithumb after a ledger error created 620,000 “ghost” BTC—roughly 13 times its actual holdings—due to a junior employee bypassing checks, violating the Virtual Asset User Protection Act. This escalates regulatory pressure following Bithumb's May 1-2 court win, where Seoul Administrative Court postponed a six-month partial business suspension and 36.8 billion won (~$25M) FIU fine for 6.65 million AML breaches (3.55M ID failures, 3.04M unblocked transactions). No funds were lost, but the incident heightens operational risks and scrutiny on Korean exchanges, potentially denting market confidence.