South Korea’s Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) slapped Bithumb with a 210 million won fine, roughly $164,000, for violations related to the transfer of user data. The penalty, issued on May 1, lands on an exchange already buried under regulatory trouble.
This isn’t even Bithumb’s biggest fine this year. In March 2026, South Korea’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) hit the exchange with a staggering 36.8 billion won penalty, approximately $24.6 million, for anti-money laundering and know-your-customer violations. The FIU identified roughly 6.65 million individual breaches in Bithumb’s AML/KYC compliance during that investigation.
And this isn’t a new story for Bithumb. Back in 2017, the exchange was fined 58.5 million won following a customer data breach. Nearly a decade later, the same exchange is still drawing penalties for how it handles user information.
The PIPC fine specifically targets user data transfer practices. The commission has been reviewing how Bithumb and other exchanges share data, including order book and trading information, with international platforms. Under South Korea’s Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA), this kind of cross-border data sharing falls squarely under the umbrella of regulated user data handling.
