Indian Bitcoin exchange Coinsecure has mislaid 438.318 BTC belonging to its customers.

In a statement by parent firm Secure Bitcoin Traders Pvt, posted late on Thursday, the biz said its chief security officer had extracted a bunch of Bitcoin to distribute to punters – and discovered the funds were "lost in the process."

The vanished Bitcoin stash was worth £2,493,590 ($3,547,745) at the time of publication, and apparently departed Coinsecure's secure coin servers on April 9.

Earlier this week, folks began to smell a rat as the site went down for an unexpected nap that day:

@Coinsecure



Site shows "

502 Bad Gateway ".. is site down Date:09.04.2018 Time 13:18



Please respond — Satish Patel (@patelsatishin) April 9, 2018

Things proceeded to become more alarming for worried customers as Coinsecure stopped accepting deposits due to “backend updates.”

Your website now says: "PS: We will not be responsible for any funds that are deposited into Coinsecure's addresses until further notice" For the record I had deposited funds before your website went down. Pls confirm my funds are safe. #Bitcoin #cryptocurrency #coinsecure pic.twitter.com/Tigj8dyPTz — Shrikant Pasari (@SKP_trades) April 10, 2018

We're told chief security officer Dr Amitabh Saxena and chief exec Mohit Kalra should have been the only ones with access to the wallet's private keys. Here's a crime report the biz filled out and submitted to Indian authorities:

With Bitcoin values tumbling after historic highs, it seems the quickest way to lose your cryptocurrency is to, er, deposit it somewhere. ®