BitGrail, a cyber currency exchange claims that it became a victim of a hacking attack late last week and lost around $170 million worth cryptos held in its digital wallets.
The site published a notice to their users on Friday, informing them about the attack while posting that the hackers made it off with approximately 17 million units of the digital currency Nano (XRB), the coin which was previously known as RaiBlocks.
BitGrail, which is based in Italy, is among many exchanges whose function is to allow the trading of Bitcoin and other digital currencies. Until recently, BitGrail was one of the main portals for the trading of Nano.
Late last week, the prices of Nano floated around $10, while in November, the worth of the cyber currency was as little as 20 cents. This price jump makes the currency a good target for hackers who have been very active for the past few months.
Currently Nano possesses a market capitalization of $1,287,013,24, making it the 24th largest cryptocurrency.
According to the post, internal checks unveiled unauthorized transactions of Nano leading to a shortfall of 17 million USD. The company was quick to report the incident to the authorities that are busy investigating.
However, the claim has been greeted with widespread skepticism, which was fueled in part due to suspicious moves which were made by BitGrail recently.
The company was in the news in January for halting deposits and withdrawals of different currencies including Nano, Crypto Forecast and Lisk tokens. This was followed by an announcement as the company planned on enforcing stringent rules to prevent money laundering. This decision was met with a mixed reaction and had even caused the prices of Nano to fall by 20%.
This had caused users to speculate a bigger plan as many predicted that the change in policy appeared to look like an exit-scam.
According to BitGrail’s note, all the transactions will be temporarily suspended while the incident is being investigated. The company has not announced anything else, especially regarding reimbursing its users.
