“Yesterday, we discovered that funds were improperly removed from the Tether treasury wallet through malicious action by an external attacker,” Tether’s development team claimed today. “$30,950,010 USDT was removed from the Tether Treasury wallet on November 19, 2017 and sent to an unauthorized bitcoin address.”
The company is now scrambling to prevent the stolen tokens from entering the wider trading economy, confirming that they will not be redeemed in its own platform. News of the hack has left a dent – albeit temporarily – in bitcoin’s week-long rally as prices dropped from today’s high of 8,315, to $7,755, losing nearly 6.8% (Bitfinex). That’s the biggest drop for bitcoin in over a week.
After this week’s low in the early hours of Tuesday (GMT), bitcoin trading value has since recovered and is currently trading at $8,204 at press time.