Bithumb, a very popular cryptocurrency exchange in South Korea was hacked. It instantly suspended both withdrawals and deposits, reporting a loss of $30 million in cryptocurrencies.
Bithumb is based in Seoul. At one point in time, the company was the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the entire world. Now it is hit by a successful hack that hits it and Bitcoin value. The theft happened Wednesday, June 20, although it is not known exactly when. After the hack was reported, Bithumb started transferring assets to proprietary cold wallets in order to prevent losing even more.
In a Twitter statement, Bithumb said:
We checked that some of cryptocurrencies valued about $30,000,000 was stolen. Those stolen cryptocurrencies will be covered from Bithumb and all of assets are being transferring to cold wallet.
The presumption was that the theft happened because of a hack but Bithumb did not officially confirm this. Although it does seem like a lot, given the power of the crypto exchange, we have to acknowledge the fact that the theft is small. This makes specialists think that a hacker simply managed to get access to a hot wallet for some thinly-traded assets that are now listed on the platform.
As it can be seen from the Twitter statement, the company will cover the losses. Users are thus not going to be affected. However, the inability to move crypto assets is a hassle for many users and it is not known for how long withdrawals and deposits are going to be suspended.
At the moment, Bithumb is the sixth largest crypto exchange in the world. It is also the second largest in South Korea. The daily trading volume is around 10% of how much was stolen, around $330 million.
Unfortunately, this is the second time that an exchange in South Korea was hacked this month. Only 2 weeks ago another hack happened with Coinrail, which lost around $37.2 million.
After reports of the hack became public, Bitcoin price quickly dropped around $200. This stopped the recovery that was seen in the market in the past 48 hours.
