Bitcoin, crypto bleed after South Korean exchange gets hacked

Cryptocurrency suffered major blows after a South Korean crypto exchange rate got hacked, leading bitcoin and other cryptocurrency prices to fall sharply to its lowest in two months.

Bitcoin dropped more than 10pc over the weekend, falling below $6,700, according to research site CoinDesk. The largest cryptocurrency has lost more than half its value this year, falling by nearly two thirds from its record high near $20,000 in December, last year. Its low for the year came in February at less than $6,000.

On Sunday, the Korean crypto exchange Coinrail tweeted that it was hacked and noted that lesser-known cryptocurrencies such as Pundi X were among those affected, according to Google Translate.

However, as soon as it detected the intrusion, Coinrail put its portal in maintenance mode, and stated that it has secured and moved most of its cryptocurrency assets in cold storage (offline) wallets. As per bleepingcomputer, the hacker's might have stolen funds worth between $30 and $40 million —with almost half of it being in NPXS tokens

Other cryptocurrencies including Ethereum, ripple and bitcoin cash have all fallen more than 11pc over the past 24 hours, reported WSJ. EOS, the token backed by startup block.one which has raised more than $4 billion, is down 20pc, according to research site coinmarketcap.com.