Echoing the Mt. Gox fiasco nearly four years ago, Tokyo-based cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck disclosed Friday it had been hacked and lost about ¥58 billion ($532 million) worth of its holdings, sending clients into a panic about the fate of their virtual assets.
If confirmed, the heist would surpass the ¥48 billion ($390 million) lost in the collapse of bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox in February 2014 and go down as the largest cryptocurrency theft since the advent of bitcoin.
Coincheck Inc., one of Japan's major cryptocurrency exchanges, said it discovered a significant drop in the balance of its NEM virtual currency at around 11:25 a.m. Friday after about ¥58 billion of it was illegitimately transferred.