South Korea’s Supreme Court has upheld a ruling that Bithumb, the country’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, must pay damages to over 100 customers who sued for financial losses resulting from the exchange’s service outage. The court upheld a ruling that required the company to.
Bithumb was ordered to pay customers for service outages
South Korea’s Supreme Court has issued a final ruling in a case related to the service outage of Bithumb, the country’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Yonhap reports.
The court ordered Bithumb to pay damages totaling 251.4 million won ($203,120) to 132 investors who filed lawsuits against the crypto exchange operator following the service outage, officials said Friday.
The plaintiffs allege that they suffered economic losses as the prices of many cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Ethereum Classic (ETC), plummeted on November 12, 2017, the day the service outage occurred. According to the lawsuit, during the service outage, the average number of orders per hour doubled and the flow of transactions slowed significantly.
The District Court initially ruled in favor of Bithumb against the investor. However, the ruling was later overturned by the Court of Appeals, which ordered Bithumb to pay damages ranging from 8,000 won to 8 million won each to 132 investors. The Supreme Court upheld the ruling on Thursday.
According to the appeals court,
the burden and cost of technical failures should be borne by the service operator, not the service users who pay fees for the service.
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