Bithumb, one of South Korea’s leading cryptocurrency exchanges, has been fined by the country’s anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing agency.
South Korea’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) fined millions of people 36.8 billion won ($24.6 million) and ordered a six-month partial suspension after finding millions of people violating the country’s anti-money laundering rules.
The Financial Services Commission said the sanctions stemmed from breaches of the Act on the Reporting and Use of Certain Financial Transaction Information, local media reported.
According to the Financial Intelligence Unit, Bithumb committed approximately 6.65 million breaches. Some 3.55 million cases involved failures to perform required customer authentication, while 3.04 million cases involved exchanges failing to properly block transactions they should have blocked.
This suspension applies to services for newly registered users. According to initial reports regarding these sanctions, existing customers will still be able to trade and transfer funds on the platform.
Regulators also fined people. Bithumb’s CEO received a censure warning, while the exchange’s reporting officer was suspended for six months.
The breaches were discovered during on-site inspections of South Korea’s five largest cryptocurrency exchanges, Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, Korbit and Gopax, between 2024 and 2025.
The case comes as South Korean regulators step up oversight of the cryptocurrency market. Last year, the Financial Intelligence Unit imposed a three-month partial trading suspension and a fine of 35.2 billion won on Dunamu, the operator of South Korea’s largest exchange Upbit, over compliance issues. Rival platform Korbit faces a smaller penalty of 2.73 billion won and an agency warning.
Founded in 2014, Bithumb is one of the largest exchanges in South Korea by trading volume, according to CoinGecko. The partial suspension comes just a month after Bithumb mistakenly distributed billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin to users.
CoinDesk has reached out to Bithumb for comment but has not received a response as of this writing.
