Bitfinex Hacked!
Bitfinex has suspended all trading and funding activity due to an attack that has led to the loss of client funds with community representative Zane Tackett putting the loss at just shy of 120k Bitcoin. The Hong Kong based exchange is currently collaborating with law enforcement agencies in the investigation surrounding the cyber crime. BitFinex was the largest exchange by volume on the BTC-USD pair with a 50% market share.
Bitfinex announced:
"While we are halting all operations at this time, we can confirm that the breach was limited to bitcoin wallets; the >other digital tokens traded on Bitfinex are unaffected."
This is the latest in a spate of hacks this year. Shapeshift lost over $230k in due a to a disgruntled ex-employee with >access to internal systems. Gatecoin, headquartered in Hong Kong like Bitfinex, was also hacked in May to the tune >of $2million (250 Bitcoin and 185k Ether) - the hacker managed to bypass the exchange's control limits whereby only 5% of customer deposits were stored in the hot wallet by routing new deposits into the hot wallet too.
Second Largest Bitcoin Hack - 120k Bitcoin is the second largest bitcoin hack to occur - second to Mt Gox and following on from Bitstamp's 2015 hack of 19k BTC (which represented 12% of its total BTC deposits at the exchange).
The largest bitcoin hack occurred with MtGox in early 2014 and saw a total of 850k Bitcoin lost.200K was subsequently recovered. This hack occurred through a technical term known as transaction malleability - or where the exchange was duped into resending withdrawals which were changed before being submitted to the network for validation. This meant the exchange thought it hadn't sent the transaction so the hacker was able to repetitively withdraw funds.
The Bitcoin price has pulled sharply lower crossing under $500 dollars 12 GMT but has subsequently rallied to $542 leaving it down 10% for the day. Volumes are strong with over 140k BTC changing hands on the BTC-USD pair. Market shares are readjusting with Bitstamp, Coinbase and BTCe all taking a lead 17%, 16% and 15% respectively - leading to a more competitive and fragmented environment on the BTC USD pair.
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Bitcoin to Fork
Following the Ethereum/Ethereum Classic situation, Bitcoin may be the next cryptocurrency to fork into two different blockchains. Users can follow the progress of the hard fork attempt through the newly found reddit r/btcfork, which was created with the sole purpose of facilitating the Bitcoin split. It is still unclear when the hard fork will take place as no new client has been released yet.
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Cryptocompare Index Remodel
We have updated the methodology behind our Indices to include a time weighted factor that takes into account whether an exchange has traded and is providing a best estimate of price. The base of our index uses a VWAP with the exchanges volume in the last 24 hrs determining its weighting in the index.
We have updated this to include a negative ranking factor that takes into account how fresh the prices are from the exchange by reducing the exchange weighting on a time weighted basis. For example if the exchange hasn't traded in the last 25 minutes we reduce its volume weighted by 99%. This allows our price index to provide a more accurate truer reflection of market dynamics and pricing.