Half a Billion Dollars stolen from Crypto currency Exchange in Japan

In the latest and biggest cryptocurrency marketplace hack that has ever taken place, Japanese Cryptocurrency Exchange has suffered massive losses amounting to 58 Billion Yen or $532 Million. The biggest ever theft in history of cryptocurrency, took place in a Cryptocurrency Trading Exchange in Tokyo, Japan on Thursday, January 25th, 2018. Nearly $420 millions in NEM Tokens and $112 in Ripples were stolen from the Cryptocurrency Exchange Coincheck, making it the biggest ever. The exchange has confirmed the news saying that the NEM Coins of the exchange were sent to another account at around 3 a.m., according to local time.

Coincheck, after the theft took place, restricted the purchase or sale of all the currencies including Yen and trading for all the other Cryptocurrencies apart from Bitcoin. The exchange also froze most of the services rendered by it including the deposits into NEM Cryptocurrency thereby leading to a dip in NEM coin value by 16.5%. The exchange has reported the same to the law enforcement agencies along with the Financial Services Agency of Japan in order to investigate the said issue.

The theft has surpassed the major theft that took place at Mt. Gox (Wold’s Leading bitcoin exchange in 2014 situated in Tokyo) amounting to approximately $450 million in 2014. Mt. Gox was handling about 70% of the total worldwide transactions in 2014 when the incident took place. It eventually had to suspend trading and file for bankruptcy protection from its creditors.

What is NEM?

NEM is a cryptocurrency (similar to bitcoin) that was launched in the year 2015.

So far, no official statement has been given by Coincheck regarding the causes that led to the hack or theft. Financial Services Agency of Japan soon issued notices to around thirty other firms which operate in virtual currency exchanges thereby cautioning them regarding the possible cyber-attacks.

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