It has been once again a very remarkable day in the cryptocurrency industry. South Korean exchange Upbit has seemingly misplaced a lot of funds due to a hacker.
The news originally started out as a rumor, but was eventually confirmed by the company.
Upbit Gets Hacked and Loses Ether
In the announcement, Upbit mentions 342,000 Ether have been stolen from the company.
All of these funds are transferred to an unknown wallet, and will be tracked on the Ethereum blockchain.
To compensate for the losses, Upbit will use its own assets.
How long this process will take exactly, has not been communicated as of yet.
Additionally, the company also indicates how funds in the Hot Wallet are now moved to the Cold Wallet for safekeeping.
As one would expect, all services associated with the platform will be on hold.
No deposits and withdrawals can be made until further notice.
It is expected that these services will remain inaccessible for at least two weeks.
It is not the first time there is a major exchange hack in the cryptocurrency space this year.
Numerous companies have fallen victims to hacker and inefficient security practices.
Unfortunately, this will not be the final incident in this space either.
It is, however, the first time Upbit suffers from such a major setback.
Having over $50m stolen from one exchange is never a positive development.
How the criminals will liquidate their bounty is another difficult question to answer.
One simply doesn’t unload such big amounts on the open market.
