Bithumb, a South Korean market-leading crypto exchange, has won its legal fight against an investor who sued it of negligence, claiming he lost USD 401,000 in cash after a 2017 data breach.
According to news agency Yonhap, a man identified only as “Mr. A” for legal reasons, alleged that he had been holding the KRW funds on the exchange, but that his data was compromised in a data leak in 2017 – and the money was subsequently lost.
Mr. A was unsuccessful in his first bid to win damages payments from Bithumb but had been hopeful of overturning the appeals hearing’s decision.
In an appeals hearing held at a branch of the Seoul High Court, Mr. A told the judge that a hacker accessed his account, used the KRW holdings to purchase ethereum (ETH) tokens converted the said tokens to fiat in four separate transactions.
As per what the court discovered, the hacker accessed a verification code sent to Mr. A’s mobile phone to authenticate the transactions.
Bithumb was determined liable and punished for some 36,000 cases of personal data leakage in December 2017.
Still, the judge at the High Court hearing stated that no evidence proved Mr. A’s data was among those exposed in the 2017 data leaks, meaning there was insufficient evidence to prove that Bithumb was indeed liable.
Numerous investors have previously made similar allegations, with limited success. Earlier this month, the exchange was declared “partially liable” for one customer’s USD 27,200 losses in a data-breach related case dating back to 2017 – and was ordered to pay USD 5,000. However, two other claimant lodging cases at the same time lost their legal battles corresponding to the exchange.
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