{"id":57586,"date":"2018-01-29T06:11:38","date_gmt":"2018-01-29T06:11:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=57586"},"modified":"2018-01-29T06:11:38","modified_gmt":"2018-01-29T06:11:38","slug":"japan-punishes-coincheck-after-530-million-cryptocurrency-theft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/technology\/japan-punishes-coincheck-after-530-million-cryptocurrency-theft.html","title":{"rendered":"Japan punishes Coincheck after $530 million cryptocurrency theft"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 18pt\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Japan punishes Coincheck after $530 million cryptocurrency theft<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Japan\u2019s financial regulator on Monday ordered Coincheck to get its act together after hackers stole $530 million worth of digital money from its exchange, jolting the nation\u2019s cryptocurrency market in one of the biggest cyber heists.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">The theft highlights the vulnerabilities in trading an asset that global policymakers are struggling to regulate and the broader risks for Japan as it aims to leverage the fintech industry to stimulate economic growth.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">The Financial Services Agency (FSA) said on Monday it has ordered improvements to operations at Tokyo-based Coincheck, which on Friday suspended trading in all cryptocurrencies except bitcoin after hackers stole 58 billion yen ($534 million) of NEM coins, among the most popular digital currencies in the world.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Coincheck said on Sunday it would return about 90 percent with internal funds, though it has yet to figure out how or when.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">The FSA is due to brief media on the matter at 2 p.m.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Japan started to require cryptocurrency exchange operators to register with the government only in April 2017, allowing pre-existing operators such as Coincheck to continue offering services ahead of formal registration.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">The FSA has registered 16 cryptocurrency exchanges so far, and another 16 or so are still awaiting approval while continuing to operate.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Coincheck has said its NEM coins were stored in a \u201chot wallet\u201d instead of the more secure \u201ccold wallet\u201d, outside the internet.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">NEM fell to $0.78 from $1.01 on Friday, before recovering to around $0.97 on Monday, according to CoinMarketCap.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Singapore-based NEM Foundation said it had a tracing system on the NEM blockchain and that it had \u201ca full account\u201d of all of Coincheck\u2019s lost NEM coins.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">It added that the hacker had not moved any of the funds to any exchange or personal accounts but that it had no way to independently return the stolen funds to its owners.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">In 2014, Tokyo-based Mt. Gox, which once handled 80 percent of the world\u2019s bitcoin trades, filed for bankruptcy after losing around half a billion dollars worth of bitcoins. More recently, South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Youbit last month shut down and filed for bankruptcy after being hacked twice last year.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">World leaders meeting in Davos last week issued fresh warnings about the dangers of cryptocurrencies, with U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin relating Washington\u2019s concern about the money being used for illicit activity.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Many countries have clamped down on exchanges.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">South Korea will ban crytocurrency traders from using anonymous bank accounts to crack down on the criminal use of virtual coins. China has ordered some exchanges to close, with the aim of containing financial risks.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">But Japan has taken a different tack, becoming last year the first country to introduce national-level regulation of cryptocurrency exchanges.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">The move, intended to protect consumers and stymie money laundering, was praised by many traders and operators as progressive.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 8pt\">Source:-\u00a0https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/us-japan-cryptocurrency\/japan-punishes-coincheck-after-530-million-cryptocurrency-theft-idUSKBN1FI06S<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"fb-background-color\">\n\t\t\t  <div \n\t\t\t  \tclass = \"fb-comments\" \n\t\t\t  \tdata-href = \"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/technology\/japan-punishes-coincheck-after-530-million-cryptocurrency-theft.html\"\n\t\t\t  \tdata-numposts = \"10\"\n\t\t\t  \tdata-lazy = \"true\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-colorscheme = \"light\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-order-by = \"social\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-mobile=true>\n\t\t\t  <\/div><\/div>\n\t\t  <style>\n\t\t    .fb-background-color {\n\t\t\t\tbackground: #ffffff !important;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t.fb_iframe_widget_fluid_desktop iframe {\n\t\t\t    width: 630px !important;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t  <\/style>\n\t\t  ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Japan punishes Coincheck after $530 million cryptocurrency theft Japan\u2019s financial regulator on Monday ordered Coincheck to get its act together after hackers stole $530 million worth of digital money from its exchange, jolting the nation\u2019s cryptocurrency market in one of the biggest cyber heists. The theft highlights the vulnerabilities in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":57588,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[116865],"class_list":["post-57586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-japan-punishes-coincheck-after-530-million-cryptocurrency-theft"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57586\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}