One of the most popular cryptocurrency exchanges online, Bitfinex has suffered a major data breach recently. The amount stolen wasn’t mentioned by the company but however one of their employees confirmed on Reddit that the total amount stolen was 119,756 bitcoins. That amount converts to about $77,000,000 based on a price of $650 USD per bitcoin, which is about what Bitcoin traded at over the course of the last week.
Today we discovered a security breach that requires us to halt all trading on Bitfinex, as well as halt all digital token deposits to and withdrawals from Bitfinex, Bitfinex statement on this attack.
After news of the hack spread the price of Bitcoin dropped almost 20% settling in around the current price of $540 USD per bitcoin. How the attack took place is still not found.
Why the price dropped is not clear yet, but it’s likely Bitcoin investors got nervous about potential hacks on other exchanges and decided to sell off their Bitcoin holdings which led to a rapid decrease in price. Bitfinex has said they have alerted and are working with law enforcement, which may complicate things further if the company needs to go through a bankruptcy proceeding.