Many crypto-traders and enthusiasts woke up to news of a hack on popular South Korean Exchange, Bithumb. The financial enormity of the hack has been estimated at $30 Million in coins stolen by the hackers. The exchange made the announcement via twitter and said the following:
[Notice for the temporary suspension of the deposits]
Due to the increasing safety issues, we are changing our wallet system.
Please do not deposit until we notify.
*All deposits are not deposited into your wallet until all changes are completed.— Bithumb (@BithumbOfficial) June 20, 2018
The exchange would also halt all deposits and withdrawals on the exchange and also convey the same via twitter.
*All deposit and withdrawal service will be stopped to make sure the security. We will keep notice you of the restart of the service. We apologize for your inconvenience and thanks for your understanding.
— Bithumb (@BithumbOfficial) June 20, 2018
Normal operations are yet to be announce by the exchange as it is requesting users not to deposit any funds to any of the Bithumb wallet addresses.
Bithumb urgently ask our valuable customers not to deposit any fund into Bithumb wallet addresses for the time being.
— Bithumb (@BithumbOfficial) June 20, 2018
Observing the time the hack happened and checking the price of Bitcoin (BTC) during the event, we find that the King of Crypto was valued at $6,700 levels. BTC would then drop to the levels of $6,612 due to the hack. This is a decline of only 1.3%. The King of Crypto is currently trading at $6,671 at the moment of writing this.
This indicates that the hack on Bithumb has not had any adverse effects on Bitcoin. This then translates that the entire crypto market has held steady amidst news of this hack. Checking the total market capitalization, we find that the value currently stands at $285.5 Billion.
The hack has managed to chip off around $5 Billion in total market capitalization which is 10 times less than what was lost during the Coinrail hack on June 10th. Also to remember on that day, is that 4 prominent exchanges were served with subpoenas by US Authorities who wanted their trading data to further their investigations on Bitcoin manipulation by the same exchanges. These two events resulted in the loss of approximately $50 Billion in the total crypto market capitalization over a two day period.
Crypto traders have proven their ability to handle another hack by not panic selling en masse as was seen during the above mentioned dates of June 10th and June 11th. Also to not is that before the Bithumb hack, the cryptocurrency markets were indicating some signs of recovery with Tron (TRX) and Ontology (ONT) leading the charge with double digit gains only yesterday. The current stability indicates that the upward path to a market recovery might be postponed by a few hours.
