Bitcoin, the highly volatile cryptocurrency, has lost roughly 20% of its value as almost 120,000 Bitcoins were stolen by hackers from Bitfinex, one of the bigger Bitcoin exchanges in the world.
According to the Hong Kong-based exchange, the hack/heist was first discovered late Tuesday and the exchange has since suspended all transactions. Zane Tackett, director of community at Bitfinex, has mentioned that a total of 119,756 bitcoins were stolen. With Bitcoins having an average value of USD650 per coin at the time of the theft, this would mean that the hackers have managed to get away with USD77 million in Bitcoins.
Immediately after Bitfinex went public with the announcement that Bitcoins were stolen from their exchange, the value of Bitcoins sharply declined. While the Bitcoin is slowly regaining its value, sitting at USD600 at the time of writing, the initial announcement did led to the Bitcoin dropping from USD650 per coin, to roughly USD480 per coin.
Bitfinex has since stated that they are working with law enforcement to investigate the theft and will be resuming operations shortly. “We are investigating the breach to determine what happened, but we know that some of our users have had their Bitcoins stolen. We are undertaking a revieew to determine which users have been affected by the breach,” says the company on its website.
Source: Bitfinex, Ars Technica