The larceny of 119,756 Bitcoin from the Bitfinex exchange has found the cost of the cryptocurrency plummet by 23 In what's been called the second largest Bitcoin theft after MtGox, $72 million worth of Bitcoins vanished from user's accounts.
It seems that Bitfinex suffered a huge security violation when it was hit by hackers who began to filter money from wallets that are segregated. Despite the hack, the exchange says that this episode doesn’t "expose any weaknesses in the security of a blockchain".
The attack on Bitfinex is especially important, as it has a large user base and is the largest dollar exchange in operation. Following the discovery of the breach, Bitfinex suspended trading, and by one percent the price of Bitcoin had crept by this morning.
A post on the site of the exchange clarified a little about what is being done and what had happened:
We discovered a security violation that needs us to block all trading on Bitfinex, in addition to prevent all digital token deposits to and withdrawals from Bitfinex today.
We're investigating the breach to determine what occurred, but we know that some of our users have had their bitcoins snitched. We're undertaking a review to determine which users are affected by the violation. While we run this first investigation and secure our environment, bitfinex.com will be taken down and the upkeep page will be left upward.
The theft is being reported to -- and we are co-operating with -- law enforcement.
As we account for customer losses that are personal, we may need to settle open margin standings, connected financing, and/or collateral affected by the violation. Any settlements will be at the present market prices as of 18:00 UTC. We are taking this bookkeeping step that is necessary to normalize account balances with the goal of restarting operations. We are going to look at various alternatives to address customer losses after in the investigation. We can confirm that the violation was restricted to bitcoin wallets, while we're halting all operations only at that time; the other digital tokens are unaffected.
As yet, it is not clear fairly what the fallout will be or exactly what's occurred. More details will emerge over the coming days and weeks.