The first rumbling that something was wrong started on June 20, when Bithumb's official Twitter account released a statement that all deposits and withdrawals on the exchange would be locked because of the $30 million theft..
However, this initial statement was quickly retracted and deleted. However, the hack was officially confirmed on June 21.
In a statement, the Bithumb team said
After the incident occured on June 20, Bithumb quickly followed the procedure to immediately report the incident to KISA announcing that about 35 billion Korean Won worth amount of cryptocurrency was stolen. However, as we undergo recovery process on each cryptocurrency, the overall scale of damage is getting reduced. Hence, we expect that the overall damage will be less than the amount we initially expected
The details about the hack are still not clear, but what is known is that thanks to quick action, some of the stolen funds should be able to be restored. The general price of bitcoin did take a 3 percent hit for a short time but quickly recovered and went back to previous levels. Analysts point out that this should be expected since some people naturally react to a hack by trying to get out, but the market corrects itself soon after. They are confident that the Bithumb hack won't signal a sudden decline in bitcoin value any time soon.
Bithumb Investors Will Be Fully Compensated
In addition to this, the Bithumb team is trying its best to allay the fears of its customers by promising that all Bithumb investors will be fully compensated from Bithumb's own company fund. According to the Bithumb team, the company fund is currently at $450 million. This should be enough to compensate for the amount lost.
Bithumb is Korea's largest crypto exchange and experienced a banner year in 2017. At the end of the previous year, they disclosed that the exchange's total assets were around a billion dollars, with a yearly revenue of $30 million.
As for the wider cryptocurrency market, it has taken the news surprisingly calm. After the initial news of the hack, there was a momentary spike in bitcoin transaction fees. The jump was from $0.58 to nearly $3 and has been confirmed as the result of Bithumb moving its assets out of their wallet at a higher transaction fee. This was to ensure that their transactions had priority. Experts say that this spike will just be temporary.