Some of my more IT-savvy colleagues from the Goldwater predicted a few months ago, at around the time that Bitcoin broke through $10k, that soon the world would see crypto exchange ‘hacks’ all around.
Well, my hat is off to both of them as the Japanese exchange Coincheck has by manner of a group of deeply apologetic men and women bowing to the assembled press admitted that some $533 million-worth of cryptocurrency was stolen from its accounts through hacking (making it even bigger than the traumatic Mt. Gox one in 2014).
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">It's unfortunate that coincheck got hacked. But we are doing everything we can to help. <a href="https://t.co/AH3lEDDG71">https://t.co/AH3lEDDG71</a></p>— Lon Wong (@2017Lon) <a href="https://twitter.com/2017Lon/status/956851031249272832?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 26, 2018</a></blockquote>
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Co-founder Yusuke Otsuka stated during a late-night press conference that: “we know where the funds were sent.”
“We are tracing them and if we’re able to continue tracking, it may be possible to recover them. But it is something we are investigating at the moment."
Given the volatile fluctuations of crypto currencies, the exact amount is hard to pinpoint, but most estimations agree that this ranks as the biggest ever hack in the history of technology.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Coincheck Confirms Crypto Hack Loss Larger than Mt Gox <a href="https://t.co/pecPNOUr27">https://t.co/pecPNOUr27</a> <a href="https://t.co/vImLoCAdJz">pic.twitter.com/vImLoCAdJz</a></p>— CoinDesk (@coindesk) <a href="https://twitter.com/coindesk/status/956922716526964736?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 26, 2018</a></blockquote>
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Mr Otsuka estimated the loss at 58 billion yen and the site ruled that no withdrawals would be possible until further notice.
Mr. Marc Ostwald, global strategist at ADM Investor Services International in London: “What’s the lasting impact? It’s hard to tell. Japan is one of the most pro-crypto trading countries, among the G-20. In Japan, they don’t really want a wholesale clampdown. So it will be interesting how Japanese regulators respond to this if they indeed do."
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