Around 46.3 billion yen (£380 million) worth of virtual currency has been stolen from a major Japanese digital exchange.
Shibuya, Tokyo based site operator Coincheck Inc has announced the theft of the lesser known cryptocurrency, known as NEM, following an ‘unauthorised access.’
This has sparked fresh concerns over security measures in terms of cryptocurrency.
The digital currency vanished on 26 January at 3am, with assets said to belong to customers.
The operator became aware of the situation eight hours after the hacking, at 1:30pm. Following this shocking discovery, Coincheck was forced to suspend all Friday cryptocurrency withdrawals apart from bitcoin.
This is said to be one of the largest ever thefts of cryptocurrency of all time.Coincheck is reportedly looking into the factors such as compensation. In an official statement, the company revealed plans to repay each of the affected 260,000 NEM coin owners at a rate of 88.549 yen (0.5756 GMP).
However, the timing and method are still being figured out.
Wada explained to reporters how NEM coins are kept in a ‘hot wallet’ rather than a more secure ‘cold wallet.’
The reasons behind this were stated as being technical difficulties as well as shortage of staff with the requisite capabilities.
The company is said to have knowledge of the digital address where the cryptocurrency was sent and is working to assess the possibility of recovering the lost assets.