The LSE Directory / Crypto exchanges
Bithumb operates a centralized cryptocurrency exchange that lets South Korean retail and institutional customers trade digital assets against the Korean won, alongside crypto-to-crypto pairs. The platform lists more than 440 digital assets as of 2025 and provides spot trading, plus deposit, withdrawal and custody services tied to a real-name-verified bank account, currently held with KB Kookmin Bank after switching from NH Nonghyup Bank in March 2025. As a licensed virtual asset service provider it operates under supervision from South Korea's Financial Services Commission, Financial Supervisory Service and the Korea Financial Intelligence Unit, and requires full KYC and two-factor authentication for account access. Bithumb competes directly with Upbit for the domestic won-denominated trading market; the two exchanges together handle roughly 96 percent of South Korean crypto trading volume, with Upbit consistently the larger of the two (its share has run from roughly two-thirds to over 70 percent through 2025 and 2026) and Bithumb typically running second, around 25 to 30 percent. Its differentiation from Upbit and smaller domestic rivals rests less on product breadth than on institutional and brokerage ties: as of mid-2026 several of South Korea's largest securities firms, including Kiwoom Securities, Samsung Securities, Mirae Asset and Korea Investment and Securities, are pursuing equity stakes in Bithumb through a third-party share placement, positioning it as a crypto-infrastructure partner for traditional brokerages moving into tokenized-securities and stablecoin services under South Korea's evolving Digital Asset Basic Act. Bithumb was founded in 2014 as Xcoin and rebranded the following year; it is headquartered in Seoul's Gangnam-gu district. Bithumb Holdings holds roughly 73.6 percent of the operating exchange, a stake it will need to reduce as pending legislation caps a major shareholder's holding at 20 percent, with exceptions up to 34 percent. For fiscal 2025 the company reported revenue of roughly 651 billion won (about $430 million), operating profit of about 163.5 billion won (about $121 million, up 22.3 percent year on year), and net profit of about 78 billion won (about $52 million, down from the prior year), while adding roughly 1.74 million new subscribers. The company has pursued a domestic listing for several years; a targeted first-half-2026 KOSDAQ or Nasdaq listing was pushed back to after the start of 2028 following a period of regulatory trouble and market uncertainty. Two 2026 incidents drove that regulatory trouble. In February 2026, an employee data-entry error credited roughly 620,000 bitcoin, worth about $43 to 44 billion at the time, to 695 customer accounts instead of a small won-denominated promotional reward; Bithumb froze the affected accounts within 35 minutes and recovered about 99.7 percent of the coins, though 86 users had already sold around 1,788 bitcoin, briefly dislocating Bithumb's on-exchange price versus other venues, and the CEO later told lawmakers that ledger reconciliation against actual holdings happened only once a day. The following month, Korea's Financial Intelligence Unit fined Bithumb roughly 36.8 billion won (about $25 million) and ordered a six-month restriction on deposit and withdrawal services for newly registered customers over an estimated 6.65 million anti-money-laundering and KYC violations, including facilitating transfers with unregistered overseas platforms; a Seoul court later stayed that suspension pending appeal.
