$16 million stolen in Cryptopia heist

Hackers have stolen over $16 million worth of ethereum and ERC20 tokens from cryptocurrency exchange Cryptopia. That's a whole lot more than the $3.6 million that was estimated last week. The New Zealand Police Department is 'making good progress' in their search for the stolen coins. They believe the investigations will take some more time as it's a 'very complex investigation'.

The New Zealand-based exchange was hacked between 13th and 14th of January, after which the site closed down to prevent further damage. Cryptopia is still in maintenance mode, and traders are not able to access their stored coins and tokens.

Last week cryptocurrency exchange Binance already traced some of the stolen coins back to their exchange. They have now frozen the account associated with the Cryptopia hack. Graviex, another exchange, is offering projects hurt by the lack of trading volume on Cryptopia, to sign up to their exchange on 'the most favorable terms'.

Investing in cryptocurrencies doesn't come without risk: centralized exchanges being accused of wash trading, trading bots manipulating decentralized exchanges without KYC procedures, and consumers with online wallet on their phone that are a targeted by cyber criminals. This is just a fraction of the types of crimes that are associated with cryptocurrencies, and it's likely only getting bigger.