[DigitalToday reporter Sang-yeop Oh] An unprecedented incident of bitcoin being mistakenly paid out at Bithumb is spreading beyond a simple mishap into distrust of the broader “book trading” system. The digital asset industry is moving quickly to offer explanations and contain the fallout.

Book trading is a method that speeds transactions by recording figures first on a computer ledger (DB) without moving the actual asset. Some critics have called it a fraudulent practice, saying coins not actually held were “minted” and traded.

But industry officials and experts agree that book trading itself is not the problem.

They say it is based on the same principle as banks managing customer deposits as electronic figures rather than stacking all deposits as cash in a vault, or brokerages not immediately moving physical shares when stock trades are executed.

The issue is “verification.” Traditional financial institutions strictly verify that ledgers match actual assets through end-of-day reconciliation. In this incident, Bithumb’s system failed to filter out coins entered in excess of holdings.

The digital asset industry is working to prevent the incident from developing into a broader trust crisis for the sector.

Industry participants have disclosed specific technical differences, saying that unlike Bithumb they have event-only accounts and real-time comparison systems.

Upbit has presented its “reserve asset proof system (Diff Monitoring),” built since 2017, as a key defense.

An Upbit official said it continuously compares actual assets in blockchain wallets with the quantities on internal ledgers 24 hours a day. The official said if even a slight discrepancy arises between the ledger and actual assets, an alert sounds immediately and deposits and withdrawals are blocked.

The official also stressed that for events, only pre-secured amounts are transferred in advance to an “event-only account,” and payouts are designed to be made only within that account, making it impossible to generate new figures in the first place.

Coinone is also seeking to differentiate itself through a “Zero-Defect monitoring” system.

A Coinone official said it reconciles on-chain wallets and the service database in real time and immediately halts trading if consistency does not match. The official said it blocks human error at the source through a “six-step cross-check” process in which marketing, service operations and financial accounting departments independently verify one another.

Some in the securities industry compare the incident with the 2018 “Samsung Securities phantom shares” case. At the time, Samsung Securities entered an employee stock ownership dividend as “1,000 shares” per share instead of “1,000 won,” circulating 2.8 billion non-existent shares.

A securities industry official said the Samsung Securities incident involved an error credited to internal employee accounts, but Bithumb’s case has far greater impact because it was paid out to an unspecified number of customers. The official expressed concern that if overseas users withdraw the coins, recovery through lawsuits would be virtually impossible and could even escalate into an international dispute.

Moves by financial authorities and politicians are also accelerating.

The National Assembly’s Political Affairs Committee will hold an emergency hearing on Bithumb at 10 a.m. on the 11th. It is known that the committee has requested the attendance of Lee Jung-hoon (이정훈), Bithumb’s founder and former chairman of Bithumb Holdings, and that officials from the Financial Services Commission and the Financial Supervisory Service, as well as Bithumb CEO Lee Jae-won (이재원), are also expected to attend. However, because it is not binding, it is unclear whether they will actually appear.

Legislation for the “second phase of the Virtual Asset Act (Virtual Asset Business Regulation Act),” currently under discussion, is expected to gain speed. Momentum is also likely to build for restrictions on major shareholders’ stakes, one of the industry’s most sensitive issues.

The digital asset industry is taking a cautious stance on this.

An industry official said it is actively cooperating with financial authorities’ plan to inspect overall internal controls. The official also said it will closely review the “standard internal control standards” in effect since June 2023 and strengthen systems in light of the incident.

Another official said there are concerns that politicians and authorities could use the incident as a pretext to introduce excessive “regulation on top of regulation,” even though the accident did not occur because laws and systems were lacking. The official added that they hope it does not become a case of burning down the house to catch a bug.