While the cryptocurrency prices are swinging in all directions these days, some things will never change in this industry. Exchanges are still being targeted by hackers and criminals, with some efforts being more successful than others. Bitrue, the trading platform, has lost several million in ADA and XRP this week.
Bitrue Gets Hacked yet Should Come Back
Every single time a cryptocurrency exchange gets hacked, there is a genuine concern regarding the future of such a platform. In most cases, the exchanges will come back sooner or later, albeit they might force users to pay for the missing funds. Such decisions never tend to go over well in this industry, albeit it has become a go-to solution for quite a few companies struggling as of late.
How Bitrue will handle things, remains to be determined. The company confirmed it had lost over $4m in funds due to a hack. The criminals were mainly interested in obtaining Cardano and XRP, which are two rather popular alternative markets. The vast majority of stolen funds was taken from the XRP balance. It is believed up to 90 users are affected by this hack.
The hacker used what they learned from this breach to then access the Bitrue hot wallet and move 9.3 million XRP and 2.5 million ADA to different exchanges.
— Bitrue (@BitrueOfficial) June 27, 2019
It would appear the hackers tried to cash out a significant portion of the funds by transferring it to several digital exchanges. It is believed that some of the funds have been frozen, albeit it remains to be seen where the rest of the money ended up at. If Bitrue can recover a portion of this stolen funds, they will have an easy time repaying users and resuming their services like normal. There will still be a loss of over $3m, but the company confirms balances were insured and will be replaced as soon as possible.
As one would come to expect from an incident on this scale, Bitrue is officially closed for business. It is unclear how long that will remain to be the case, but it is possible the exchange will make a comeback later this week. For now, the company has not officially confirmed anything in this regard, thus users will need to remain patient. A lot will depend on how the associated investigation moves along.
It is not the first exchange to be hacked in 2019, and it will most certainly not be the last either. Various trading platforms have drawn the attention of hackers and criminals, primarily because cryptocurrencies remain popular. Additionally, the rising prices of Bitcoin and altcoins will undoubtedly attract even more attention. Whether that will be for better or worse, is difficult to determine at this point.
For the time being, it seems this incident has no relation to the ongoing Bitcoin price decline which took place earlier today. It seems plausible to assume this news will not have a positive impact on that price trend either, although one never knows what to expect when it comes to these volatile cryptocurrencies. For now, it would appear none of the markets will note a new all-time high prior to the weekend coming to a close.
Disclaimer: This is not trading or investment advice. The above article is for entertainment and education purposes only. Please do your own research before purchasing or investing into any cryptocurrency or digital currency.
