South Korea’s privacy regulator announced on Thursday it has imposed a penalty of 210 million won (approximately $135,700) on Bithumb, one of the nation’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges. The fine was levied for breaches related to the international transfer of its users’ personal data.
The Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) finalized its decision, including the financial penalty and a directive for corrective actions, during a plenary session held the preceding day, addressing the exchange’s data privacy violations.
Investigations by the regulator revealed that between September and November 2025, Bithumb engaged in the unauthorized overseas transfer of users’ personal information. This occurred while the South Korean crypto platform was sharing order book data with a foreign exchange.
A key finding was that despite Bithumb notifying users that their information would be transferred to the “Stellar exchange,” the data was, in fact, rerouted to bingx.com, a system operated by an entirely different overseas exchange.
