Just under 120,000 bitcoins were reported stolen from the Bitfinex exchange platform on Wednesday, causing a nearly 15% drop in the currency’s price. A security breach that led to this theft of approximately $65 million worth of bitcoin is causing panic and confusion among the currency’s holders, reported Vocativ.
In response to the breach and the plunging rate, numerous bitcoin holders started expressing confusion and panic on social media and bitcoin forums. Many worried that the theft underscores the new and untested nature of the currency, and wondered if they’d be better off selling off their bitcoins and putting their money back in the conventional market.
One user on Reddit’s bitcoin room launched a semi-comic thread linking to the anti-suicide hotline for those were affected by the hack, however some responses expressed genuine solidarity. “You can get past this like us old chaps did with Mt Gox,” a user named Bitcoin_CFO responded to the Reddit thread referring to the 2014 theft of 450 million USD worth of bitcoin from Tokyo-based bitcoin exchange.
“We are definitely witnessing some panic, but the fundamental concept of bitcoin was not damaged, due to the attack,” Ayal Segev, an Israeli bitcoin expert told Vocativ. “The question now is how the market will respond. The question is whether the market, the investors, and the exchange platforms are mature enough to recover.”
The platform, Bitfinex, acknowledged the breach, writing, “Today we discovered a security breach that requires us to halt all trading on Bitfinex, as well as halt all digital token deposits to and withdrawals from Bitfinex.” The message continued to say it would to commit every resource to secure its customers’ investments.
Sourced from Vocativ, Featured image courtesy: bitcoinhub.co.za
