Upbit to compensate traders who couldn't log in via KakaoTalk

An Upbit office in Gangnam, southern Seoul, on July 20. [YONHAP]

Upbit is compensating crypto traders who lost money due to the KakaoTalk outage over the weekend.

The crypto exchange, the largest in Korea, will compensate users who claim to have experienced losses from not being able to trade in a timely manner.

To be compensated, traders have to submit materials, including the types and quantity of crypto assets owned, sales records and the reason they think they faced losses due to the login failure.

Users who were unable to log in through KakaoTalk will receive three days of free Bitcoin trading even if they don't claim losses.

Kakao servers were knocked out as a result of a fire at a Pangyo, Gyeonggi, data center that started Saturday afternoon. The company’s messenger and services offered by related companies were unavailable, degraded or intermittent anywhere from 10 hours to two days as backup systems failed to kick in fast enough.

Upbit, which enables logins only through KakaoTalk and Apple accounts, said access via KakaoTalk stopped for around 20 hours starting at 3:20 p.m. on Saturday.

Cryptocurrency transactions plummeted as users were unable to log in to Upbit. As of 3:30 p.m. Saturday, minutes before Kakao’s services went down, the 24-hour crypto trading volume 1.34 trillion won ($940 million), according to CoinGecko. At the same time the following day, 24-hour volume was down by half.

Upbit said it will be offering its own login system on Oct. 31. Its current login options will no longer be available from Nov. 21.

BY JIN MIN-JI [jin.minji@joongang.co.kr]