After losing the equivalent of $ 30 million worth of crypto-currencies as a result of what appears to be piracy, the South Korean exchange platform Bithumb has decided to suspend all deposits and withdrawals.

$ 30 million stolen corners on Bithumb

BithumbThe Seoul company, which was once the largest cryptocurrency trading platform in the world, announced in the night of Tuesday to Wednesday that the equivalent of $ 30 million worth of cryptocurrencies had been stolen.

If it is impossible to know precisely the time of this flight, we know that Bithumb suspended the deposits at about 2:53 GMT.

The platform immediately began transferring all of its assets to cold wallets, in order to avoid incurring additional losses.

The following tweet, released tonight - and in which Bithumb says the victims would be reimbursed - seemed to have been removed by his teams when writing this article:

[Notice for the suspension of all deposit and withdrawal service]
We checked that some of cryptocurrencies valued about $30,000,000 was stolen. Those stolen cryptocurrencies will be covered from Bithumb and all of assets are being transferring to cold wallet.
— Bithumb (BithumbOfficial) June 20, 2018

We have seen that cryptocurrencies, worth $ 30,000 million, have been stolen. These stolen crypto-currencies will be covered by Bithumb, and all assets are being transferred to a "cold wallet"

If this theft probably results from hacking, Bithumb has not confirmed it formally. Due to the relatively small amounts that were stolen, it is likely that the pirate managed to empty the "hot wallet" of a relatively unpopular corner.

South Korea: the second hacking in two weeks

South Korea and crypto-currenciesBithumb is currently the sixth largest platform in the world and the second largest exchange site in South Korea with a daily trading volume that exceeded, when writing this article, the $ 420 million. This would be the third piracy of the platform over the last twelve months.

And this is the second time in two weeks that a South Korean platform has been hacked. On June 10, the site Coinrail had lost the equivalent of $ 37.2 million corners.

Remember, however, that the majority of major digital asset trading platforms have never been hit by hackers:

If the Bitcoin price plummeted following the announcement, some observers believed that Coinrail - a platform with a daily trading volume of only $ 2 million - was not at the origin.

For its part, following the announcement of Bithumb, the price of Bitcoin went from more than 6750 dollars to nearly 6600 dollars in the space of half an hour, before recording a rise:

At the time of writing, the BTC was trading at $ 6,660, down 1.04% over the past 24 hours. It seemed, for now, difficult to know the longer-term consequences of this piracy on crypto-markets.