Investing.com – Cryptocurrencies prices tumbled on Wednesday, with Ethereum and Litecoin falling more than 5%. A report released on Tuesday suggested that theft of cryptocurrencies from exchanges soared in the first half of 2018 to three times the level seen for the whole of 2017.
Bitcoin was trading at $6,478.6 by 1:30AM ET (05:30 GMT) on the Bitfinex exchange, down 2.7% over the previous 24 hours.
Ethereum, the world’s second largest cryptocurrency by market cap, was down 5.0% to $458.46 on the Bitfinex exchange.
Ripple’s XRP token plunged 7.3% to $0.47958 on the Poloniex exchange.
Meanwhile, Litecoin traded 6.2% lower to $83.873.
CipherTrace, a U.S.-based cybersecurity firm, said in a report on Tuesday that money-laundering events associated with cryptocurrencies has increased three-fold so far in 2018. A total of $761 million was stolen from digital currency exchanges this year, compared with about $266 million for the whole of 2017.
The losses could rise to $1.5 billion this year, CipherTrace estimated.
"Stolen cryptocurrencies are three times bigger this year than last year so the trend is obviously not our friend here," Dave Jevans, chief executive officer of CipherTrace, said in an interview with Reuters on Tuesday.
The surge in cryptocurrency crime has attracted the attention of global regulators and law enforcement, Jevans added.
Japan’s Financial Services Agency (FSA) hit six local crypto exchanges with business-improvement orders in June. Meanwhile, in the same month South Korea-based crypto exchange Bithumb has been hacked and 35 billion won (US$31.5 million) worth of virtual coins were stolen.
Cryptocurrencies prices were under pressure in recent weeks, with Bitcoin falling around 70% from its December peak just short of $20,000.