The Financial Supervisory Service of South Korea has escalated the investigation into the Bithumb Bitcoin erroneous payment incident to a formal audit.

Techub News reports, according to Yonhap News Agency, the Financial Supervisory Service of South Korea has escalated its investigation into the large-scale Bitcoin mispayment incident at the Bithumb exchange from an on-site inspection to a formal audit, launching a comprehensive investigation on the same day. The FSS stated that the nature of this incident is extremely serious and has deployed additional personnel to conduct a high-intensity audit, focusing on verifying whether the exchange violated the "actual holding obligation," whether there is a "ghost currency" issue, and internal control loopholes. The investigation will focus on the reasons why Bithumb, which actually holds approximately 46,000 Bitcoins, mistakenly paid out 620,000 Bitcoins, as well as asset custody and accounting consistency under its "ledger trading" model. Financial authorities pointed out that this matter could shake the overall trust in the virtual asset market. They will further verify whether the mispaid Bitcoins pose a structural risk of large-scale simultaneous withdrawals and review the internal approval loopholes at Bithumb that allowed a single individual to complete such a massive transfer.