Major cryptocurrency exchange UPbit has been hacked, resulting in the loss of about $52.8 million worth of Ethereum.

According to an announcement released this week, UPbit has fallen victim to a hack, resulting in a significant loss in Ethereum from the exchange:

“At approximately 13:06 on November 27th, 2019 (KST), 342,000 ETH was sent from UPbit’s Ethereum hot wallet to an anonymous wallet address – 0xa09871AEadF4994Ca12f5c0b6056BBd1d343c029.”

At time of writing, the lost Ethereum is valued at $52.8 million USD. In response to the hack, UPbit is suspending all deposits and withdrawals on the platform for the next two weeks, and has reportedly moved all funds to cold storage:

UPbit is not using the word “hack” for $51.3 million loss. At this point, considering the possibility of insider job. — Joseph Young (@iamjosephyoung) November 27, 2019

“Crypto-asset deposit and withdrawal will be enabled in approximately 2 weeks. We will notify you of the exact date once it is finalized. We also promise to update you with any further developments. Also, we ask for the crypto community’s support in blocking deposits from the anonymous address 0xa09871AEadF4994Ca12f5c0b6056BBd1d343c029. If you find out any information regarding to this suspicious transaction or the anonymous wallet, please report to us.”

South Korea-based UPbit is considered one of the top three exchanges by the Blockchain Transparency Institute (BTI), and is among the BTI’s “verified exchanges,” as legitimate and “clean” due to low perceived levels of wash trading and other manipulative practices.

The potential for Dash InstantSend to minimize the risk of trading

In light of major breaches such as the recent UPbit hack, traders may seek options to limit their exposure to exchanges and other large platforms which may carry a risk of being a target for hacks. Dash depsoits to exchanges which have explicitly integrated recognizing InstantSend instant confirmations are confirmed instantly, allowing traders to largely control their own funds until soon before executing a trade, minimizing the amount of funds on an exchange at any given time. Some exchanges such as Coinbase recognize Dash significantly faster than other cryptocurrencies, which while not instant nonetheless reduces the need to maintain a balance on exchanges and vulnerable to hacks.

In addition to minimizing security risks for trading by allowing traders to keep their funds off of exchanges for longer, Dash Core CEO Ryan Taylor believes that InstantSend can help improve market volatility, reducing the amount of time a user has to hold funds denominated in Dash between transactions, thereby reducing their exposure to price swings.