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The digital currency exchange firm, Bitfinex, has temporarily stopped trading after a hack in which the attackers stole $63 million worth of bitcoin. The digital currency exchange company based in Hong Kong acknowledged the security breach on Tuesday this week. Apparently, the firm is working in close collaboration with law enforcement.
“We are currently looking into the security issue to determine what happened. We are aware that some users have lost their bitcoin,” Bitfinex said in a statement. In the declaration, the digital currency firm does not say how many bitcoins got lost in the breach. But, the site’s director of community and product development Zane Tuckett, on Reddit, said that the company lost 119,756 bitcoins. When asked to confirm the figure, Bitfinex did not respond.
Currently, a bitcoin is selling at $527.25, but the price is falling as more people learn about the security breach. Bitfinex trades other digital currencies too, including lite coin and ether. The company claims that the security breach affected the bitcoins only.
About the customer losses the company had this to say: “We are accounting for individual customer losses, meaning we may have to settle open-margin positions, associated financing and\or collateral related to the security breach. As the investigation continues, we will look into ways to compensate customer losses.”
Digital currency exchange firms have fallen victims of security breaches severally in the past years. In April 2016, Shapeshift counted significant losses after a security breach. The company reported later that the breach was an inside job. In May, another digital currency exchange, Gatecoin, was hacked and as a result lost $2 million.
But the incidents of digital currency exchange security breaches are nothing compared to the Tokyo-based Mt. Gox security breach in 2014. The firm had to shut down as it lost $474 million worth of bitcoins in the security breach.
According to Tackett, Bitfinex site will remain down until the company is sure, beyond any reasonable doubt, that it is safe to go back online.
