A South Korean court on Thursday overturned Bithumb’s six-month partial trading suspension, according to Yonhap News.
The news agency cited legal sources and said that the Second Administrative Division of the Seoul Administrative Court, Judge Gong Hyeon-jin, had accepted Bithumb’s request to stay the execution on the same day it was filed. There was no clarification on whether a 36.8 billion won ($24.6 million) fine 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 an application with the court 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 sanctions stemmed from violations of the Act on Reporting and Use of Specific Information Concerning Financial Transactions, the Financial Services Commission said in March.
The FIU said Bithumb committed around 6.65 million violations, of which 3.55 million involved failures in required customer identity verification, while 3.04 million were related to cases where the exchange did not properly block transactions that should have been blocked.
While the court ruling 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 regarding the exchange of order books with foreign platforms.
The case against Bithumb is part of increased oversight of the cryptocurrency market by South Korean regulators. In 2025, the FIU imposed a three-month partial suspension and a fine of 35.2 billion won on Dunamu, the operator of the country’s largest exchange, Upbit, for non-compliance. Korbit, a rival platform, faced a minor fine of 2.73 billion won along with institutional warnings.
Bithumb was established in 2014 and is currently among the largest exchanges in South Korea by trading volume, according to data from CoinGecko. The end of the suspension comes two months after Bithumb mistakenly distributed billions of dollars worth of bitcoins to users.
