Japanese licensed cryptocurrency exchange Bitpoint has become a new victim of hackers and lost $32 million in crypto assets in the recent attack.
Unfortunately, despite all the efforts made by their operators, cryptocurrency exchanges are still rather vulnerable to hacker attacks. Now the crypto world is discussing the name of a new victim that has been added to the list of exchanges suffered from hackers. This time the sad news came from Japan where Bitpoint lost $32 million in crypto assets.
Based in Japan, Bitpoint is a licensed cryptocurrency exchange. Before the attack, it provided its customers with an opportunity to trade five cryptocurrencies. Among them, there are the world’s major ones, including Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Litecoin and XRP.
As it has been disclosed by the CoinDesk Japan, after Bitpoint noticed unusual withdrawal from its hot wallet, it took a decision to halt all services. It means that starting from Friday morning trading, deposit and withdrawal of all crypto assets are closed.
At the current moment, there is no information which types of crypto assets were stolen. It’s just known that $23 million from the total illegal outflow of $32 million belonged to customers. It has been disclosed by Remixpoint Inc., the exchange’s parent company.
Hacker Attacks in Japan
Nevertheless, let us remind you that this situation with Bitpoint is not the first breach of an exchange registered in Japan.
Last September, Zaif, another licensed exchange under the Japanese Financial Services Agency, also made headlines being hacked. In that hack, it lost $60 million in cryptocurrencies. Among the stolen assets there were 6,000 Bitcoin as well as Bitcoin Cash and the Monacoin cryptocurrency.
To compensate the funds, the exchange’s operator Tech Bereau entered in a partnership with a Japanese publicly listed investment firm called Fisco. Under the terms of the agreement, the business of Zaif was transferred to Fisco Cryptocurrency Exchange.
And one more example of a hacked Japanese exchange is Coincheck. As we recently reported, this exchange made history (without any intentions to do it) in early 2018 when it lost funds worth approximately $520 million in NEM tokens. The attack was named the major crypto theft and led to increased regulatory scrutiny of crypto exchanges in the country.
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