Digital coins worth 530 million dollar worth stolen from Coincheck

Updated:7 years, 9 months ago

Japan, Jan 30 (ANI): It's one of the biggest-ever hacking heists of digital money, hackers stole 530 million dollar worth of digital coins from Tokyo-based cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck on Friday. The crypto-currency exchange was forced to freeze trading on all currencies except bitcoin. Coincheck promised to repay nearly 90% of what was taken with its own funds. Though the payout will be in yen, not digital coins, to around 2,60,000 affected customers. On Monday, Tokyo regulators warned Coincheck to get its act together and explain what happened by mid-February. The NEM coins were stored in a 'hot wallet' instead of a more secure 'cold' one. The reason of keeping the coins in a ‘hot wallet’ was due to shortages of staff and technical difficulties, cited Coincheck president Koichiro Wada. Crypto currency exchanges in Japan only had to register with the government after April last year. Companies like Coincheck have been allowed to continue business as normal while waiting for approval. NEM coins can actually be traced and the NEM Foundation in Singapore says it has a full account of all of Coincheck's lost coins. However, it also says it has no way to return the stolen funds to their owners and so far the hacker has not moved any of the money to a personal account, or onto another exchange.