Bitcoin drops 10% after hack of South Korean exchange service

CoinRail, a small cryptocurrency exchange service based in South Korea, reported on Sunday that it fell victim to a cyberattack and publicly confirmed it on Twitter. As a result, bitcoin prices collapsed by 10 percent to the lowest since April.

“The price of bitcoin dropped $500 in a single hour Sunday to hit a two-month low below $6,700,” wrote CoinDesk.

Following the hack, CoinRail lost some 30 percent of the tokens traded at the time of the hack, namely Pundi X (NPXS), NPER (NPER) and Aston (ATX). Local media estimated the loss at $37.28 million. CoinRail”s website has been in maintenance mode ever since the hack was identified. Their website said most of the cryptocurrency has been moved to offline wallets but it gave no detail about the actual financial loss.

“At present, 70% of your coin rail total coin / token reserves have been confirmed to be safely stored and moved to a cold wallet and are in storage,” reads their website (according to Google translate). “Two-thirds of the coins confirmed to have been leaked are covered by freezing / recalling through consultation with each coach and related exchanges. The remaining one-third of coins are being investigated with investigators, relevant exchanges and coin developers.”

CoinRail is working with an external forensics agency to investigate the breach and recover from the damage. Together with the compromised ICOs, they are trying to freeze the stolen tokens.

As South Korea is an important cryptocurrency trading center, this is not the first time a cryptocurrency exchange service has been attacked. After it was hacked twice, Youbit shut down in December.