Coincheck have said that $523 million of a Japanese exchange’s NEM coins were sent to another account at around 3am local time.
After the hackers stole the cryptocurrency, Coincheck then restricted withdrawals of all currencies including yen and trading of cryptocurrencies other than bitcoin.
Coincheck management said it held the coins in a “hot” wallet, which is a method of storage linked to the internet.
The exchange service said earlier it had suspended all withdrawals, halted trading in all tokens except Bitcoin, and stopped deposits into NEM coins.
Representatives of Coincheck, the operator of the cryptocurrency NEM, told a press conferenece in Tokyo that some 58 billion yen of the digital currency they manage has disappeared from a Japanese exchange due to hacking.
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The Japanese exchange said it did not appear that hackers had stolen other digital currencies.
Japan’s Financial Services Agency is looking into the situation.
Cryptocurrency NEM, which intends to help businesses handle data digitally, briefly fell more than 20 percent Friday before recovering totrade about 10 percent lower.
Coincheck have said the currency was sent “illicitly” outside the venue.
Co-founder Yusuke Otsuka said the company didn’t know how the 500 million tokens went missing, and the firm is working to ensure the safety of all client assets.
“We know where the funds were sent,” Mr Otsuka said during a late-night press conference at the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
“We are tracing them and if we’re able to continue tracking, it may be possible to recover them. But it is something we are investigating at the moment.”
Experts sat down at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week to discuss bitcoin.
General partner and co-founder of Index ventures, Mr Neil Rimmer said: “Bitcoin is completely trustworthy with no central authority. Some people who invest in it do not trust their government.”
The hack and the loss of the currency is one of the biggest losses of assets since the launch of Bitcoin in 2009.
Similar to bitcoin, NEM is a cryptocurrency built on top of blockchain but it uses a more environmentally friendly method to confirm transactions.