CoinExchange Shutters Following $700k Hack in 2018

CoinExchange Shutters Following $700k Hack in 2018
  • $700,000 worth of bitcoin was stolen from a cryptocurrency platform based in Japan.
  • The two hackers who were behind the theft have now been arrested.
  • There isn’t a record of the exchange ever having public disclosing the loss though.

$700,000 worth of bitcoin was stolen from a cryptocurrency platform based in Japan in 2018. The two hackers who were behind the theft have now been arrested.

Following the disaster, the platform announced that it is closing down.

According to a local news source, the suspects went to hack the Tokyo based platform in October 2018. The two hackers then transferred the stolen money to accounts held on crypto platforms located both in and outside of the nation. In an interesting turn of events, one of the suspects was an employee of the crypto platform.

The report claims that Tokyo police opened up the investigation following the crypto theft was reported by CoinExchange. There isn’t a record of the exchange ever having public disclosing the loss though. But there are several reasons as to why they didn’t decide to go public. The main one being that it could’ve been caused panic into the users of the platform, leading them to withdraw the funds in a massive panic. Not only would this lose customers but it could damage the reputation of the exchange.

The theft occurred at a time when Japan was essentially tightening up its cryptocurrency regulations to help reduce these kinds of occurrences. Since the Coincheck hacking, Japan’s financial regulator has taken a much more solidified approach to reduce this kind of thing happening on crypto platforms.

While the loss of cryptocurrency funds was worth about $700,000 and it might not affect a big platform, this exchange was relatively small and low profile at the time. This added to the depressing market conditions even if it just came off the back of a $20,000 bitcoin.

It will be interesting to see how this situation plays out. For more news on this and other crypto updates, keep it with CryptoDaily!

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