The Bitpoint exchange was hacked! Japan is still affected by cryptocurrency hijackings

On July 12th (Friday), Bitpoint, a Japanese cryptocurrency exchange owned by Remixpoint, lost $32 million in cryptocurrency in a hacking attack and stopped all operations.

Bitpoint users lose $22.7 million in cryptocurrency

Japan is one of the most worrying countries in the world for cryptocurrency storage security. As of the end of May, the financial technology research company MEDICI released a report that in the past eight years, worldwide, the value of 2.71 billion US dollars of cryptocurrency was lost in exchanges and cryptocurrency wallets, Japan accounted for 92.203 billion Dollar. In other words, one third of all cryptocurrency fraud and hijackings occur in this “sunrise country”.

However, Japan seems unable to stop before the cryptocurrency loss reaches the $1 billion mark, and hackers are working towards this number. On July 12th, Bitpoint, a cryptocurrency exchange, announced that it had lost 3.5 billion yen. This hack attack focused on Ripple (XRP) and other cryptocurrencies. Bitpoint said that of the lost cryptocurrency, the cryptocurrency worth 2.5 billion yen ($22.7 million) is owned by the user, and the rest is owned by Bitpoint.

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Interestingly, the Financial Services Agency (FSA) issued an order to Bitpoint last year expressing dissatisfaction with the company's internal controls and requiring it to improve the operation of the exchange. More ironically, the order was overturned at the end of June. Therefore, this hacking attack may be one of the reasons why FSA strengthens its supervision of the local encryption market.

FSA should take measures as soon as possible

Bitpoint's hacking took place after a series of major hijackings in Japan over the years. The country has experienced two of the most serious hacking attacks in the field of encryption, including cryptocurrency exchanges Coincheck (2018) and Mt. Gox (2014). Based on the exchange rate at the time of the two hijackings, the losses totaled $860 million.

Currently, the total market value of cryptocurrencies exceeds $318 billion, which means that more than 0.30% of crypto assets are lost in Japan.

We are expected to see FSA quickly take steps to prevent other similar hacking attacks. Japan may restart its discussion of cryptocurrency regulation, which will put some pressure on the cryptocurrency market.

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