Investing.com – Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies plunged on Monday amid reports of a crypto exchange hack in South Korea.
Bitcoin was trading at $6,800.8 by 11:25PM ET (03:25GMT) on the Bitfinex exchange, down 8.0% over the previous 24 hours.
Ethereum, the world’s second largest cryptocurrency by market cap, plunged 8.6% at $530.1 on the Bitfinex exchange.
Ripple’s XRP token fell 10.0% to $0.58395 on the Poloniex exchange.
Meanwhile, Litecoin lost 5.5% to $108.23.
South Korea-based Coinrail said in a statement on its website that some of the exchange’s virtual currency appeared to have been stolen by hackers, although the value of the stolen coins were not specified. The exchange is now cooperating with investigators to try to recover the assets, according to the statements.
Coinrail took its service offline and moved the remainder of its assets, which represented 70% of the exchange’s total holdings, to cold storage while it fully investigates the incident.
Bitcoin fell as much as 11% following the news, bringing its year-to-date loss to 53%, while other major cryptocurrencies also slumped.
“This is ‘If it can happen to A, it can happen to B and it can happen to C,’ then people panic because someone is selling,” said Stephen Innes, head of Asia Pacific trading at Oanda Corp. in Singapore.
In January, Japan-based Coincheck announced hackers stole nearly $530 million of digital money from the exchange. Turnover on the exchange in April was about 95% lower than in December after the hack spooked clients and cryptocurrency prices tumbled.