At 2:57 a.m. on Friday in Tokyo, someone hacked into the digital wallet of Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck Inc. and pulled off one of the biggest heists in history.
Three days later, the theft of nearly $500 million in digital tokens is still reverberating through cryptocurrency markets and policy circles around the world.
The episode, disclosed by Coincheck executives at a hastily arranged press conference on Friday night, comes at an awkward time for Japanese regulators, who began rolling out a new licensing system for cryptocurrency venues just a few months ago. It has heightened calls for stricter oversight and may influence a closely watched debate in neighboring South Korea over whether to ban digital-asset exchanges outright.