Japan, the home of cryptocurrency, or is it now the home of the cryptocurrency hack? Although Japan now has some of the tightest regulations surrounding the operations of cryptocurrency exchanges, it seems these regulations haven’t been enough to stop yet another devastating hack take place, this time, seeing around $60 million stolen in Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash and MonaCoin from Tech Bureau owned Zaif.

Zaif is a cryptocurrency exchange with a trading volume just shy of $72,000,000.00. Active markets within Zaif include Bitcoin, NEM, MonaCoin, Ethereum and of course, Bitcoin Cash. Of course, by all accounts Zaif is not the biggest exchange in Japan, even with this in mind though the exchange is still a hot spot for the exchange of a range of altcoins, with quite a large customer base too.

In the wake of the hack, Zaif have spoken out to reassure customers that their own assets have not been affected by this hack, however it is hard to see how, with $60 million lifted in various cryptocurrencies, surely some customer assets will be at risk here.

According to CBS News, Tech Bureau, the parent company of Zaif have recently made the following statement:

"We decline to comment on the details of how this illegal access occurred, as it is a crime and we've already asked the authorities to investigate. We will prepare measures so that customers' assets will not be affected."

In addition to this, Zaif have commented that they are able to seek compensation through a major shareholder, although I’m not sure lending is the best way to climb out of a hole quite this large.

Zaif have declined to comment on exactly how the hack has taken place, which leads us to believe it can only be down to a major security flaw or vulnerability that existed as a result of a lack of care and attention by Zaif. We know that this hack was carried out through some sort of malicious server access, though we can’t tell if it’s remote, or perhaps even something internal, therefore we could speculate that this may have taken place from inside the walls of Zaif so to speak.

For now, we expect to hear a more formal announcement with regards to what has happened, after this, we will expect to see a more detailed plan about how Zaif and Tech Bureau aim to overcome this. Indeed, Zaif will bounce back with tighter security protocols and will eventually be able to operate as they where, however,, this event will have a very damaging impact on the reputation of Zaif and of course, we expect that over the afternoon that it could have a slight impact on the value of the markets, which otherwise at the time of writing are looking quite stable. Bitcoin is up 0.81%, Ethereum is down just 0.86% and EOS is up 2.67%, this afternoon though, things are now likely to take a slight downturn.

CBS News