Crypto Exchange in South Korea, Bithumb hacked! Market Gains Erased

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Bithumb, one of the most successful crypto exchanges in South Korea was just attacked.

All deposit and withdrawal services are halted after attackers stole 35 billion won or $31 million.

*All deposit and withdrawal service will be stopped to make sure the security. We will keep notice you of the restart of the service. We apologize for your inconvenience and thanks for your understanding.

— Bithumb (@BithumbOfficial) June 20, 2018

The company, which is based in Seoul used to be the world’s largest crypto exchange. Currently Bithumb ranks as the sixth-largest and South Korea’s second-largest crypto exchange. The daily trading volume is a little over $330 million, according to CoinMarketCap.

The type of currencies which were stolen from the platform remain undisclosed. The platform announced it will cover all the losses. The theft was most likely done by an attacker gaining access to a “hot wallet”. Damage control measures were instantly taken as the company said a majority of assets were moved to “cold wallets”.

This basically means the cryptocurrencies are stored offline, with no risk of hacking.Bithump also addressed investors’ concerns by saying they should “immediately cease cryptocurrency deposits until further notice”.

Crypto exchanges will have to take more strict security measures

This attack will raise alarm bells because a similar accident took place a little over a week ago. Coinrail, another cryptocurrency exchange in South Korea was targeted on June 10. There was no official damage report, but sources estimate the losses to be around $40 million worth of coins. This also includes a variety of ERC-20 tokens.

The price of Bitcoin suffered directly as a result from this attack. The market saw a $200 drop, which almost entirely erased the market gains from the last two days.

Attacks on crypto exchanges will unfortunately keep increasing. The same way businesses and platforms are rapidly adapting to the blockchain platform so are criminals. Every country which wants to use the advantages the blockchain technology offers, must also be prepared for the risk. Countries, banks and international corporations need to increase their budget when it comes to security. Threats which were only whispers are now becoming increasingly more loud.

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