$44 BILLION of Bitcoin that never existed traded live for 20 minutes — and everyone is missing the real risk.
Friday night in Seoul.
Bithumb runs a promo: winners get 2,000 KRW ($1.40).
One employee types BTC instead of KRW.
Boom.
695 users receive 2,000 BTC each.
620,000 Bitcoin credited out of thin air — nearly 3% of all BTC that will ever exist.
Bithumb held 175 BTC itself.
The system created 14× more Bitcoin than the exchange owned — and the trading engine accepted it as real.
Users panic-sold.
1,786 BTC dumped.
Price on Bithumb crashed 17% while every other exchange stayed normal.
Caught in 20 minutes.
99.7% reversed.
Rest covered by corporate funds.
Blockchain untouched.
Crypto Twitter screams “FTX 2.0.”
It’s not.
FTX was fraud.
This was a fat-finger inside an internal ledger.
And that’s the scary part.
Your CEX balance isn’t Bitcoin.
It’s a database number.
It only becomes real when you withdraw on-chain.
Bithumb proved one thing:
Exchanges can sell coins they don’t have — without touching the blockchain.
Blockchains are trustless.
Exchanges aren’t.
And the gap between your balance and on-chain reality?
That’s crypto’s most underpriced risk. 🔥
$ESP
