It is a black Friday for cryptocurrencies, after the news of the hack of the Japan-based digital exchange Coincheck the value of major cryptocurrencies dropped.

It is a black Friday for cryptocurrencies, the news of the hack of the Japan-based digital exchange Coincheck had a significant impact on their value.

Coincheck was founded in 2012, it is one of the most important cryptocurrency exchange in Asia.

The Coincheck suspended the operations of deposits and withdrawals for all the virtual currencies except bitcoin, the exchange announced it was investigating an “unauthorised access” to the exchange.

According to the company, the hackers stole worth half a billion US dollars of NEM, the 10th biggest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.

The news of the incident has a significant impact on the NEM value that dropped more than 16 percent in 24 hours.

“At 3 am (1800 GMT) today, 523 million NEMs were sent from the NEM address of Coincheck. It’s worth 58 billion yen based on the calculation at the rate when detected,” said Coincheck COO Yusuke Otsuka.

“We’re still examining how many of our customers are affected,”

The experts at the exchange are investigating the security breach to find out whether it was from Japan or another country.

Coincheck discovered the incident at 11.25 am and notified the suspension of trading for all cryptocurrencies apart from bitcoin via Twitter.

We are currently halting deposits, withdrawals, buying and selling of NEM. Please accept our sincere apologies for this inconvenience and rest assured that we are working to resolve this issue as quickly as possible.https://t.co/4OCB0LPDuz — Coincheck (@coincheck_en) January 26, 2018

In February 2014, Mt. Gox suspended trading and filed for bankruptcy protection from creditors.

At the time, the company was handling over 70% of all bitcoin transactions worldwide, it announced that approximately 850,000 bitcoins ($450 million at the time) belonging to customers and the company were stolen.

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – Coincheck, Security Breach)

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