A cyber attack on a little-known exchanger caused the loss of billions of dollars from the total capitalization of cryptocurrencies. The price of Bitcoin fell 7% immediately after South Korean exchange Coinrail announced that it had become the target of scammers. On Monday, the company announced a security issue that resulted in the exchange losing 30% of all crypto assets stored on it.
Coinrail representatives announced that they are temporarily suspending the operation of the exchanger and are fully committed to cooperating with the investigation to return the stolen funds. The exchanger did not report the exact amount of missing cryptocurrency. It was mostly not Bitcoin that was stolen, but not the very popular altcoins.
Over the past year, cryptocurrency trading has become a popular means of earning money in South Korea. Coinrail is one of the country's least known exchangers.
However, this news spread almost instantly among market participants. The prices of most cryptocurrencies have begun to fall. According to CoinMarketCap, in 7 hours more than $30 million worth of cryptocurrencies were withdrawn from the exchanger's storage.
At the time of writing, the price of Bitcoin is $6,775.15. That's the worst performance in two months and about half of Bitcoin's value earlier this year.
“Every day investors have more reasons to worry about cybersecurity,” said Adrian Lai, co-founder of Hong Kong investment firm Orichal Partners. “At this stage, it is clear that the cryptocurrency market does not have the required standards.”
Coinrail is not the only exchange that has fallen victim to hackers and scammers over the past few months.
In January, the Japanese exchange Coincheck reported the theft of more than $530 million - at that time this amount was a record. This incident prompted the Japanese government to begin monitoring and auditing crypto exchangers.
According to Lai, the Coinrail hack worsened the already bad mood in the cryptocurrency markets
According to Wall Street. Journal, on Friday, American investigators demanded that some exchangers hand over trading information as part of an investigation into the possibility of manipulating futures markets.
According to money.cnn.com
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