Bitcoin price plummets to $540 over Bitfinex hack

The coin has lost 11% following the news of the security breach at the Hong Kong cryptocurrency exchange, which resulted in nearly 120,000 BTC ($73 mln) stolen.

At the press time, bitcoin is traded at $539.7, with a local minimum of $512 reached since the evening 2 August. This is the lowest price the cryptocurrency was since May.

The main reason behind the drop in the price is the hacker attack on Hong Kong cryptoexchange Bitfinex last night. The total amount lost is 119,746 BTC worth of more than $73 mln at the time of the attack.

So far Bitfinex has not officially confirmed the figures, however, one of the exchange employees Zane Tackett shared the information in a Reddit trend. He also confirmed the previous statement that only bitcoin funds were targeted, while litecoin, ETH and ETC assets are intact.

The market players rushed to dump their bitcoin assets expecting that the Bitfinex hack may be the first in a series of attacks on large cryptocurrency exchanges. The daily trading volume reached 601,000 BTC ($331.3 mln) overnight, which is twice as high as a day before.

The exchange states the incident has been reported to law enforcement agencies. Meanwhile, the exchange has to halt all operations to carry out investigation procedures.

“As we account for individualized customer losses, we may need to settle open margin positions, associated financing, and/or collateral affected by the breach. Any settlements will be at the current market prices as of 18:00 UTC. We are taking this necessary accounting step to normalize account balances with the objective of resuming operations,” the official announcement said.

As of today, Bitfinex is the third most popular bitcoin exchange with a day trading volume at nearly 16,000 BTC (about $3.7 mln). Apart from bitcoin, the exchange allows trading in litecoin and both versions of Ethereum tokens – ETH and ETC – against bitcoin or US dollar.