By CCN.com: Did you ever dream of waking up in the morning to unexpectedly find a vast amount of cash miraculously appearing in your account? That is what recently happened to users of a prominent South Korean crypto exchange.
Coindesk Korea has reported that the Korean crypto exchange Coinnest has accidentally airdropped over $5 million in bitcoin and Korean won and is looking how to reclaim their misdirected funds.
Accidental Airdrop Lands Exchange in Trouble
Coinnest has announced it has accidentally sent 6 billion Korean won worth of bitcoin, which equates to $5.3 million, to the accounts of traders. The Korean crypto exchange was attempting to airdrop We Game Tokens (WGT), but somehow their wires got crossed and they wrongly airdropped bitcoin instead in a catastrophic blunder.
Amidst the madness, Coinnest also accidentally sent some Korean won to users but has been trying to roll back their servers to recover their losses. As expected, some account holders saw the crypto and withdrew it right away. The exchange is now asking their users to return the misdirected funds. Coindesk Korea also noted that because so many Coinnest users were scrambling to withdraw their surprise winnings that it crashed the bitcoin price on the site to almost $50.
The server issues were apparently fixed on Jan 19, with approximately half of the Korean won already returned. At this point in time, Coinnest does not have any plans to compensate anyone for the losses, although we believe the issue is not yet over.
Coinnest in the News Again
This is not the first time Coinnest have made the crypto news due to blunders and buffoonery. In the first quarter of 2018, the Korean crypto exchange was caught up in a scandal where their former chief executive Kim Ik-hwan was suspected of allegedly embezzling billions of Korean won from client’s accounts and transferring them to his own accounts.
The Coinnest board of directors swiftly acted to remove their former president and continued to apologize to their users for any negative impact they had experienced due to the alleged embezzlement.
Kim Ik-hwan was arrested and questioned by local Korean authorities, but the outcome of the case seemed to evaporate into the ether and has remained very quiet ever since.
It seems that Coinnest and controversy go hand in hand. As of yet, no-one from the exchange has answered our questions pertaining to the misguided airdrop. But we will keep you up to date on any developments.