Cryptopia hacked, large amount of ERC20 tokens transferred before official announcement
Cryptopia, a cryptocurrency exchange based off in New Zealand has just announced on their official twitter account that their exchange has been hacked.
Cryptopia says that it was exchange was hacked on January 14th 2019 that resulted in significant losses. The team has notified and involved appropriate government agencies including New Zealand police and high tech crimes unit who are now investigating this issue.
Right now, the exchange has been put in maintenance mode, which means trading and funds are not accessible which is not a good situation for the users.
There is no word when the exchange will be made online. Interestingly, Cryptopia was hacked just couple of months back as well – yes November 2018.
- Also check out – Cryptopia halts trading due to server overload
Infact, the exchange in question still has not compensated the affected users till now.
@Cryptopia_nz when will you finally start compensating your customers for the hack occured at your exchange early november 2018? I want my #GTM coins back, you have held them hostage now for 3 months! pic.twitter.com/B7VNAeI1Fu
— Mine_phun (@NLPOOLNL) January 9, 2019
Some crypto OGs and blockchain experts are already calling it a “Classic exit scam”.
Classic exit scam. Was expected anyway https://t.co/xrM1rczz2a
— Squeeze [When Moon?] (@cryptoSqueeze) January 15, 2019
Cryptopia exchange also transferred large amount of ethereum and erc20 tokens on January 13th.
Lot of $eth and erc20 transferred from #cryptopia on Jan 13. pic.twitter.com/UsplCtTMyX
— Kamaldeep Singh (@kamalds) January 15, 2019
Large amounts of erc tokens were moved before their announcement
— ฿itcoin (@CryptoChrisG) January 15, 2019
As pointed by one user, the exchange has been in maintenance mode since the 13th of January. Also, the exchange has removed all of their tweets they made since January 13th. Interesting – very.
The weird thing is they are in “Maintenance mode” since the 13th actually and they removed all their tweets from 13th January?
— Craig Satoshi ⚡️ (@HOMBART_83) January 15, 2019
Do not use exchange has wallet to store your crypto
This is yet another lesson for the users who use cryptocurrency exchanges as wallets for storing crypto. Remember, if you do not have access to your private key, you do not own the funds.