Bithumb, the world’s sixth-largest and South Korea’s second-largest cryptocurrency exchange, suffered a massive breach after hackers stole 35 billion won ($31 million) from the platform. The exchange immediately halted deposit and withdrawal services from its servers.
The company is yet to disclose which and how much cryptocurrency had been stolen. “We checked that some of cryptocurrencies valued about $30,000,000 was stolen,” Bithumb said on Twitter. “Those stolen cryptocurrencies will be covered from Bithumb and all of assets are being transferring to cold wallet.”
The company has assured that it will cover all losses, so that users will not be affected. Within an hour of information going public, the price of Bitcoin price dropped nearly $200, erasing much of the recovery that the markets had seen over the previous two days.
The hack marks the second incident in less than two weeks in South Korea. On June 10, cryptocurrency exchange, Coinrail lost approximately $37.2 million worth of coins. Following the hack, the value of Bitcoin dipped an all-time low of at $6,790.88. The currency exchange lost about 30 percent of the coins it traded. Its website has temporarily suspended trading and is currently working with investigators. The site reassured users that remainder of the coins were “safely stored.”
“This is not the first time that Bithumb was reportedly hacked. As previously reported by CoinDesk, the platform was compromised last year with as many as 30,000 users impacted. At that time, Bithumb later announced that it would repay each victim with 100,000 Korean won each, an amount worth about $85,” suggested a report on CoinDesk.
