South Korea’s supreme court upheld the ruling by Bithumb, the country’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, to pay damages to over a hundred customers who filed a lawsuit alleging they suffered financial losses as a result of the exchange’s outage. .
Bithumb ordered to pay customers for service interruption
South Korea’s supreme court has issued a final ruling in a case involving a service outage at Bithumb, the country’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Yonhap reported.
The court ordered Bithumb to pay damages totaling 251.4 million won ($203,120) to 132 investors who filed a lawsuit against the cryptocurrency exchange operator following the service outage, officials said Friday.
The plaintiffs claimed that they suffered financial losses due to sharp price declines in various cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and ethereum classic (ETC), on November 12, 2017, when the service interruption occurred. According to the lawsuit, during the outage, the average number of orders per hour doubled, causing transaction flows to slow down significantly.
A district court initially ruled in favor of Bithumb against the investors. However, the decision was later overturned by an appeals court, which ordered Bithumb to pay damages ranging from 8,000 won to 8 million won to each of the 132 investors. The supreme court upheld this ruling on Thursday.
According to the appellate court:
The burden or cost of technological failures must be borne by the service operator, not by the service users who pay the service fee.
Do you think cryptocurrency exchanges should be held accountable for service outages that cause investors to lose money? Let us know in the comments section.
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