A South Korean court has temporarily lifted a six-month partial business suspension on crypto exchange Bithumb, handing the platform a legal reprieve as regulators continue to tighten oversight of the industry.
On Thursday the 2nd Administrative Division of the Seoul Administrative Court granted Bithumb’s request for a stay of execution, Judge Gong Hyeon-jin accepted the petition the same day it was filed, Yonhap News reported. The court order halts enforcement of the suspension imposed in March by the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), though it’s not yet clear whether the FIU’s separate 36.8 billion won ($24.6 million) fine has also been stayed.
The sanctions issued in March were tied to alleged widespread breaches of anti-money‑laundering (AML) rules under the Act on Reporting and Using Specified Financial Transaction Information. The FIU said Bithumb committed about 6.65 million violations: roughly 3.55 million failures to perform required customer identity checks and about 3.04 million instances where the exchange failed to block transactions that should have been blocked.
Bithumb, founded in 2014 and one of South Korea’s largest exchanges by trading volume (CoinGecko), challenged the penalties in court soon after the regulator announced them. The stay of execution marks a tactical win for the exchange, but it does not resolve the underlying legal dispute — proceedings are expected to continue.
Regulatory pressure on the sector is mounting across multiple fronts. South Korea’s Personal Information Protection Commission has reportedly opened a probe into Upbit, Bithumb and other platforms over alleged sharing of order-book data with overseas venues. Earlier enforcement actions in 2025 included a three-month partial suspension and a 35.2 billion won fine for Dunamu (operator of Upbit) and a 2.73 billion won penalty plus institutional warnings for Korbit.
The court’s decision arrives two months after Bithumb accidentally distributed billions of dollars worth of bitcoin to users, a high-profile operational mishap that heightened scrutiny of the exchange’s controls. For now, the stay gives Bithumb breathing room to operate while the legal and regulatory processes unfold.
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