COINCHECK IS BEING SUED AFTER $690 MILLION HACK

After last month’s hack, where $690 million worth of NEM coins were stolen, victims are launching a lawsuit against the Japanese exchange.

After the hack happened, Coincheck froze any attempted withdrawal in an attempt to get control over the size of the breach. This week, they allowed the customers of the platform to exchange their remaining NEMs for Japanese Yens, but they are still not able to move the money to their personal wallets.

Coincheck promised to return 90% of the stolen money to the 260,000 affected investors.

The reason for the lawsuit lies in the fact that the users are restricted from withdrawing their investment from the trading platform.

Lawyer Jun Tabata explains the situation:

“Coincheck says it’s a security issue which is preventing them from repaying customers their cryptocurrency, but we are saying if you’ve got the currency available you must provide it to us because that’s what your rules state.”

Cryptocurrency scholar Philippa Ryan from the Sydney University of Technology proposes that “there simply might not be any tokens left to give back to customers.”

Currently, there are 10 victims represented by the lawyers who filed the lawsuit. They are expecting more people to get in on the legislative dispute on the second hearing at the end of February.

Coincheck has stated that they were able to track the stolen coins, which, if true, means that when the hackers try to cash out their NEMs, they should be easily identifiable. This could be a good thing for the exchange, who’s reputation will probably be forever tarnished.

This will be an interesting case to follow as it will have a large impact on the public opinion on cryptocurrencies. As much as the mainstream media has talked about this hack recently, it will probably also talk about how Coincheck proved to be honest if they end up paying the coins back to the victims.

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