Bitcoin Slips Below $7,000 Amidst News of Cyber-Intrusion In a South Korean Exchange

On Sunday, June 10, Bitcoin witnessed a steepest fall in the last three months as the world’s largest cryptocurrency slipped by nearly 10% in a single day. This sharp fall was due to a “cyber-intrusion” taking place which was reported by a South Korean exchange Coinrail.

The Coinrail website said that “70% of its total coin/total reserves were safe” and, “Two-thirds of the coins confirmed to have been leaked are covered by freezing / recalling through consultation with each coach and related exchanges.”

In addition to Bitcoin, majority of the top ten cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Ripple and others witnessed a fall of more than 5-7%. According to the data on WordCoinIndex, the overall cryptocurrency valuation has slipped below $300 billion while witnessing a fall of more than $30 billion in one single day.

In comparison to its peers in the top-ten cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin has managed to hold the fall relatively well as the price of other altcoins has dropped higher in terms of percentage fall.

South Korea has emerged as the third-largest cryptocurrency market in terms of trading volumes in the last one year. The sudden rise in the crypto activity in South Korea was witnessed soon after China introduced a ban on crypto-trading last year in September 2017.

Moreover, there have been continuous hacking attempts reported from South Korean exchanges in the last one year. In July 2017, one of the South Korea’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb reported that information of 31,800 customers being compromised. At that time, the hackers managed to breach through getting personal information and customers data but thankfully, the customer accounts were not compromised.

In December 2017 when the crypto market and specifically Bitcoin was at its peak, another South Korean exchange YouBit was attacked wherein 4000 BTC coins worth $48 million were stolen. YouBit had to later wind-up its operations filing for bankruptcy.

Although there has been a growing interest among institutional players in the cryptocurrency market, the market is still witnessing low transaction volumes of BTC along with high-volatility. This could be probably because institutional investors are still waiting for regulatory clarity in the cryptocurrency space.