Hackers Allegedly Steal Millions from Cryptopia, a Cryptocurrency Exchange in New Zealand

A New Zealand based cryptocurrency exchange known as Cryptopia was allegedly hacked on January 14th. The hackers stole cryptocurrencies worth millions of dollars. According to Cryptopia, the local police authorities and New Zealand’s unit of high tech crimes are investigating the issue.

Cryptopia informed their users about the hack via a tweet stating that the exchange had suffered a security breach which resulted in a loss of funds caused by hacking. Cryptopia exchange then underwent maintenance as the team worked to assess the damage. The exchange will remain in maintenance mode, and trading will be suspended until the problem has been resolved. The website of the exchange itself is offline.

On January 13th, 19,391 ETH (Ethereum) worth around $2.5 million and 48,029,306 CENNZ tokens (Centrality) worth about $1.18 million were transferred from Cryptopia exchange to unknown wallets. As of now, the owner of the wallet is not yet confirmed. It could be the exchange itself or the hackers.

The growing number of exchange hackings has caused a negative reputation to spread with cryptocurrencies. In 2018, CoinCheck, a Japanese cryptocurrency exchange was hacked, and approximately $500 million of funds were stolen. If these crimes continue to happen then newcomers in the crypto space will lose trust in cryptocurrencies and in turn, the whole cryptocurrency market will suffer.

Leading names in the crypto industry are calling for people to opt for decentralized exchanges because they are much safer when compared to Centralized exchanges.

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