Hacked Japanese Exchange Coincheck to Resume Yen Withdrawals on Tuesday
Japanese exchange Coincheck has announced it will re-enable customers to withdraw their fiat yen deposits next week.
In an announcement today, the embattled exchange confirmed it will remove the temporary suspension of Japanese Yen (JPY) withdrawals from customers’ accounts at the exchange. The suspension was put in place to ‘protect and ensure the integrity of customer assets’, the exchange said, after laying claim to the dubious honor of suffering the biggest hack in the history of the cryptocurrency era.
In its notice , the exchange said:
“Regarding resumptions of JPY withdrawals Currently, all customer JPY assets are being stored in a customer-specific account in a major financial institution. We plan to resume normal operations for JPY withdrawals from the following date (February 13th) and will process customer requests in the order in which they come in.”
Furthermore, the company said the date of withdrawals is unrelated to its promise to issue reparation payments for XEM holders who lost their tokens in an infamous hack in late January. Two weeks ago to the day, Coincheck executives dramatically confirmed swirling rumors that the exchange had been the victim of a hack wherein 500 million NEM tokens, worth $530 million at the time, had been stolen from its hot wallet. The following day, Coincheck announced its intention to compensate some 260,000 NEM holding victims.
The incident saw Japan’s finance minister, a notable critic of excessive regulation of the cryptocurrency sector, urge Japanese regulators to wield better supervision over cryptocurrency exchanges. Coincheck is among 16 exchanges current operating without an official grant and registration under Japan’s financial regulator, the Financial Services Agency (FSA). This week, the regulator has reportedly set to path on-site inspections of various cryptocurrency exchanges as a concentrated move to increase scrutiny and force domestic exchanges to adopt better cybersecurity practices.
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