A little-known virtual currency exchange, named Coinrail helped to the wipe of billions of dollars of the value of bitcoin and some other digial currencies.
Coinrail was hacked during this weekend and bitcoin dropped in value once again, felling into a two-month low leading to worries about the security of the small virtual currency exchanges.
The price of bitcoin dropped more than 7% after South Korea exchange named Coinrail announced that it had been targeted by hackers. On monday the Exchange stated that it had a suffered a major security breach in which hackers stole about 30% of its virtual currencies, causing serious damage to exchange users.
Coinrail had to temporarily suspend all trading activity in digital currencies and was fully cooperating with investigator to try to track down the stolen funds.Coinrail exchange did not disclose the value of tokens stolen.
This happening once more created panic and uncertainty in the world of Crypto currencies, as it shows how vulnerable the infrastructure can be and how easily the coins can get stolen by hackers.
This proves that the rapid growth in popularity of the digial coins came with a big disadvantage – there is no solid security against external threats and investors are subject to risking that their coins get stolen.
Similar events have happened before in the past with more virtual currency exchanges, and this can destabilize the market by creating panic between the investors.
According to investing.com “On the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp, bitcoin was trading at $6,763.96, down a sharp 11.2%from Friday, having slide down roughly 65%from its all-time peak hit around mid-December 2017.”