South Korea eyes crypto circuit breakers after Bithumb mistakenly transferred $42B in Bitcoin, exposing weak internal controls

620,000 BTC instead of 620,000 KRW — no unit validation on a transfer field turned a $400 payout into a $42B phantom balance. Circuit breakers would've caught the downstream liquidation cascade, but they don't fix the actual failure: an exchange processing asset transfers where humans can fat-finger the denomination without a confirmation gate. FSC's new 5-minute ledger reconciliation mandate matters more long-term — it's mandated near-real-time proof-of-reserves for every Korean CEX, something the industry should've standardized after FTX.

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