South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb has discontinued deposits and withdrawals soon after losing $30 million actually worth of cryptocurrencies as the result of an apparent hack.
The Seoul-based company, once the world's biggest cryptocurrency exchange, on Wednesday revealed that $30 million worth of unrevealed cryptocurrencies had been swiped from the platform.
It is not clear at what time the fraud occurred, but Bithumb suspended deposits at approximately 00:53 UTC and immediately began transferring all of its assets to cold wallets to avoid further losses.
" We checked that a little of cryptocurrencies valued about $30,000,000 was stolen," Bithumb said on Twitter. "Those stolen cryptocurrencies will be covered from Bithumb and all of assets are being transferring to cold wallet."
The theft presumably occurred as the outcome of a hack, though the exchange has not officially confirmed this. Given the relatively small size of the theft, it's likely that a hacker handled to gain access to an internet-connected "hot wallet" for just one of the more thinly-traded assets noted on the platform.
Bithumb said that the company will deal with all losses so that other users will not be affected, other than by the temporary failure to move their assets. Deposits and withdrawals were suspended as of the time of writing at 1:58 UTC.
Bithumb currently ranks as the world's sixth-largest and South Korea's second-largest cryptocurrency exchange, with a daily trading volume of just over $330 million, according to CoinMarketCap.
The incident marked the second time a South Korean exchange had been hacked this month. Less than two weeks ago, little-known bourse Coinrail lost approximately $37.2 million worth of coins, including a variety of ERC-20 tokens.
The bitcoin price went down nearly $200 in the hour following the hack, erasing much of the recovery that the current market had seen over the previous 48 hours.
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