A South Korean court on Thursday overturned Bithumb’s six-month partial suspension of operations, according to Yonhap News.
The news agency cited legal sources, saying Judge Gong Hyeon-jin of the Seoul Administrative Court’s 2nd Administrative Division accepted Bithumb’s request for a stay of execution on the same day it was submitted. No details were given on whether a fine of 36.8 billion won ($24.6 million) was also suspended. South Korea’s financial watchdog imposed the fine and suspension in March, alleging massive violations of local anti-money laundering rules.
Bithumb, one of South Korea’s largest crypto exchanges, filed a court application asking it to end the suspension and fine imposed by the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) in March after the regulator said it found the exchange had committed millions of violations of the country’s anti-money laundering rules.
The penalties stem from violations of the Act on Reporting and Use of Specific Financial Transaction Information, the Financial Services Commission said in March.
The FIU said Bithumb had committed approximately 6.65 million violations, of which 3.55 million involved failures to perform required customer identity verification, while 3.04 million were related to cases where the exchange failed to properly block transactions that should have been blocked.
While the court’s decision ending the suspension is good news for the exchange, it follows reports that South Korea’s Personal Information Protection Commission has launched an investigation into Upbit, Bithumb and other platforms over sharing order books with foreign platforms.
The case against Bithumb is part of increased scrutiny of the cryptocurrency market by South Korean regulators. In 2025, the FIU gave Dunamu, the operator of the country’s largest exchange, Upbit, a three-month partial suspension and a fine of 35.2 billion won for compliance failures. Korbit, a rival platform, faced a lesser penalty of 2.73 billion won as well as institutional warnings.
Bithumb was established in 2014 and currently ranks among the largest exchanges in South Korea by trading volume, according to CoinGecko data. The end of the suspension comes two months after Bithumb mistakenly distributed billions of dollars of bitcoin to users.
