More Than $30 Million Worth In Bitcoin Gets Stolen From A Bitcoin Exchange Website

More Than $30 Million Worth In Bitcoin Gets Stolen From A Bitcoin Exchange Website

June 21, 2018 0 By Austin Patel

One of the world’s most significant Bitcoin exchanges, Bithumb, a South Korea based exchange website, announced that $30 million worth of cyrptocurrencies were taken from them last week. While reviewing the problem, they announced on their website that they had suspended every deposit and withdrawal made by their customers. In response to many users worrying about their funds, the Exchange website announced that they are going to make sure to compensate the loss from its own funds. They stated that all customers’ assets have been secured in the company’s cold wallet. A cold wallet is a Cryptocurrency wallet that stores its private keys offline, ensuring security against hackers. As a result of all recent reports of hacking, many Cryptocurrency exchanges are now exploring different alternatives and better ways to protect customers’ funds. But, there’s still a lot to improve in order to make it perfect.

South Korea Is Having A Rough Time With Hacker Attacks

Bithumb isn’t the only one facing problems with hackers. At the beginning of June, another South Korean Cryptocurrency exchange, Coinrail reported that 30% of their virtual currencies were stolen by hackers. Bithumb and Coinrail were the last reports in a series of thefts reported by South Korean Crypto exchange in the previous months. This isn’t something that has happened randomly. Some users might think that emerging last year as one of the world’s major markets for Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency trading made South Korea a target for hackers.

Bithum, One Of South Korea Most Significant Cryptocurrency Exchanges

It’s located in Seoul; their primary clients are residents of South Korea, they are some of the leading Cryptocurrency markets in terms of daily transactions. The average daily liquidity turnover at Bithumb at the end of 2017 was an equivalent to $1.3 billion. They only offer trading pairs with the South Korean won (KRW); since they are a Cryptocurrency exchange based in South Korea, and they serve primarily to the residents of South Korea. Bithumb is one (if not the) largest South Korean trading platform. And not only that, but according to CoinMarketCap.com, Bithumb made its way to be the sixth biggest Cryptocurrency exchange worldwide by trading volume in the last week.

This Attack Won’t Change Bitcoin Fundamentals

On June 20, during an interview with CNBC, Litecoin (LTC) founder Charlie Lee stated: Bithumb hack doesn’t affect Bitcoin’s fundamentals. Bitcoin had a price drop recently in the market; Charlie Lee says this is a usual reaction to the news about the hack, “it happens all the time” he says, people get afraid.The hack of a Cryptocurrency exchange goes almost like a bank robbery.The hack of a Crypto exchange does not affect Bitcoin, like a bank robbery shouldn’t affect the price of gold. And, if the exchange didn’t protect the coins well enough, it wouldn’t really change the fundamentals of the currency they were protecting in the case a hack does occur.