48 billion yen Bitcoin disappeared from Japanese cryptocurrency exchange

This is the second largest cryptocurrency theft in Japanese history.

On May 31, Japanese digital currency exchange DMM Bitcoin announced that it lost 4,502.9 BTC, worth about 48.2 billion yen (308 million USD) due to an “illegal leak”.

Leading Japanese corporation DMM, this exchange discovered an anomaly at around 1:26 p.m. (local time) on the same day.

Previously, DMM Bitcoin traded about 40 cryptocurrencies. The report shows that, as of March 2023, this exchange has about 377,000 accounts.

According to Reuters, cryptocurrency companies are frequently the target of hacks and cyberattacks, although losses on such a large scale as this one are rare.

DMM Bitcoin pledges to refund customers' lost Bitcoins with the help of other companies in the group. According to NHK Television, the Japanese Financial Services Agency has asked the company to investigate the incident.

According to Tom Robinson, co-founder of Elliptic Crypto Research, if this was a theft, it would be the eighth largest cryptocurrency theft of all time, based on the exchange rate at the time it occurred. This case is also the largest case since FTX was hacked for 477 million USD in November 2022.

At the same time, the#Bitcoinworth 42 billion yen that DMM lost is also the second largest loss ever in Japan, only losing 58 billion yen stolen from the Coincheck exchange in Tokyo in an incident. Same in 2018.

According to cryptocurrency research firm Chainalysis, in 2023 alone, about $1.7 billion was stolen from various cryptocurrency platforms.$BTC