Coincheck will reimburse 260,000 customers who lost holdings of NEM currency
A Japan-based cryptocurrency exchange will refund about $400m to customers stolen by hackers two days ago in one of the biggest thefts of digital funds.
Coincheck said it would use its own funds to reimburse about 46.3bn yen to all 260,000 customers who lost their holdings of NEM, the world’s 10th biggest cryptocurrency by market capitalisation.
On Friday, the company detected an “unauthorised access” of the exchange and later suspended trading for all cryptocurrencies apart from bitcoin.
Coincheck said its NEM coins were stored in a “hot wallet” instead of the more secure “cold wallet” outside the internet because of technical difficulties and a shortage of staff capable of dealing with them.
The resulting 58bn yen ($530m) loss exceeded the value of bitcoins that disappeared from MtGox in 2014 .
The major Tokyo-based bitcoin exchange collapsed after admitting that 850,000 coins – worth around $480m at the time – had disappeared from its vaults.
The high-profile demise of MtGox failed to douse the enthusiasm for virtual currencies in Japan, which became the first country in the world to proclaim it as legal tender in April last year.
