In perhaps the most unexpected news of the week, Bitcoin has lost more than 10% of its value after a major exchange, Binance, learned of suspicious activity on its network. This caused the exchange to halt all withdrawals of the world’s most popular cryptocurrency.
Bitcoin’s price fell 10.8% to $9,494.45 from its original value of $10,709.53 on Wednesday because of this. Currently, the cryptocurrency is trading close to the $10,000 mark (around $9900 at the time of writing).
What Caused The Drop
The price drop was triggered after a hacking attempt caused the exchange’s trading bot to increase the price of Viacoin, which led to a panic in the market. The motive of the hacker, although unclear, may have been to benefit short-term investors.
Binance, for its part, has denied any serious issues have taken place on its exchange or that any funds were lost. It is investigating any reports of misdoings on its network.
As of this moment, the only confirmed victims have registered API keys (to use with trading bots or otherwise). There is no evidence of the Binance platform being compromised.
Dark Times for The Crypto World
Just weeks before, the exchange raised eyebrows after an unexpectedly long system upgrade. The news is further bound to concern people, as Binance is one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange in terms of trading volume. As of latest, it still hasn’t resumed trading.
The event comes just days after the derivatives exchange BitMEX announced an issue concerning user-logins, before announcing the root cause to an unexpected server spike. In short, things are shaking up in a big way for some of the largest crypto exchanges in the world. Keep your wallets safe.