The exact time of the hack is not clear yet, but the South Korea-based exchange froze all deposit transactions shortly after midnight June 20, Wednesday. The company reps claim that some digital coins worth around $30 mln have been stolen. They also promised that the losses will be reimbursed to the customers and the rest of the assets is being sent to a cold wallet.
Was the hack big indeed?
The hack has not been confirmed officially, just the fact of the money disappearing. But experts believe that if the exchange was hacked indeed, the whole thing was performed by one attacker who gained access to one of the “hot wallets” connected to the Web.
Bithumb “hacking anniversary”
Bithumb is currently in sixth place among the largest global platforms and is second biggest in South Korea itself. Its daily trading volumes exceed $330 mln, that is what Coinmarketcap says. According to these figures, the money stolen is just a small part of Bithumb’s daily turnover.
Just to remind, it was already hacked almost a year ago, when the hackers got away with several billion wons, whereas one bln Won is equal to around $870,000.
Also, about two weeks ago another South Korean exchange, Coinrail, was attacked, losing around $37 mln equivalent of cryptocurrencies.
Market response
After the Coinrail hack Bitcoin slightly dropped in price but the rates recovered over the last 48 hours.
It is not yet known if the Bithumb hack will make BTC slump, it probably will, since this exchange is much bigger than Coinrail. But on the other hand, the money lost was not big and the market seems to be getting used to such things as hacking exchanges. As the Coinrail experience shows, the prices recover pretty quickly.
Tomiwabold Olajide
Vladislav Sopov
Dan Burgin