Over the past weekend Bitcoin rate fell more than 10% after the South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Coinrail announced that it had been targeted by cyberthieves. According to CoinDesk, Bitcoin rate fell below $ 6,700.
Coinrail Exchange Hacked
Coinrail is among the world’s top 100 cryptocurrency exchanges by trading volume. On Sunday, June, 10, exchanged made a statement and announced that some of the less-known cryptocurrencies were stolen by hackers from users’ accounts.
The exchange said it is working to recover lost crypto assets. Coinrail did not specify the cost of the stolen cryptocurrency. However, according to some estimates, the amount is more than $ 40 million, writes TechCrunch. Coinrail stated that it had frozen the stolen and suspended all trading to help police to investigate the case.
The Possible Loss
About 70% of Coinrail’s crypto assets were transferred to a “cold” wallet not connected to the Internet.
Cyberthieves stole $ 19.5 million in NPXS tokens issued by the Pundi X project, $ 13.8 million in the Aston X token , $ 5.8 million in Dent tokens. Also attackers stole $ 1.1 million in the tokens of the widely known Tron project and smaller amounts in other tokens.
It is still unknown how Coinrail intends to compensate for the losses have been made by this hack attack.
Pundi X reported that about 3% of their tokens’ emissions have become the prey of cybercriminals. The team froze stolen tokens and suspended trading on all exchanges to help the investigation, which is already being conducted by the South Korean police. The NPER project, whose assets were stolen about $ 860,000, froze tokens. They plan to incinerate them so that the hacker could not use them. Aston X also froze tokens, the Coinrail exchange reported.
Other projects have not yet commented on the situation. Coinrail writes that two-thirds of the stolen tokens have already been frozen. The exchange expects actions from the rest of the team.
Cyber attacks are a serious problem for the cryptocurrency market. In January, the Japanese exchange Coincheck suffered a cyber attack. Also, in February – the Italian exchange Bitgrail was hacked.
Also the news that CFTC demanded from the cryptocurrency exchanges to provide data on trading after the launch of bitcoin futures negatively affected on the market . Earlier, in may the US Department of Justice initiated an investigation to determine the possibility of Bitcoin price manipulation.
