Bitmarket Shuts Down
The cryptocurrency industry is continually under attack from hackers; it’s become so frequent that it’s rare for a week to pass by where a small attack hasn’t taken place. Unfortunately, Bitmarket, a Polish-designed cryptocurrency exchange, has felt the effects of hacking attacks. Though there hasn’t been any official confirmation that Bitmarket was attacked, the company’s website abruptly stopped operations on 2017-07-08.
Bitmarket was the second largest cryptocurrency exchange in Poland. It’s come as a shock that operations have ceased. On Monday, July 6th, the website was still in process. Somewhere around 2 A.M., the site shut down without any warning signs. All that remains on the website is a message that informs clients that due to a loss of liquidity, Bitmarket was forced to shut down and that they’ll notify clients about future steps in the coming weeks.
The Warning Signs
There hasn’t been any announcement from Bitmarket or Blockchain regulators regarding if Bitmarket has been hacked. However, there is also a Reddit Sub-Forum that has clients from Bitmarket speaking with one another. Those clients are indicating that the exchange was hacked and that there were some pre-warnings before Tuesday.
One indicator was that clients were asked to change their passwords but weren’t provided with any context as to why a password change was required. There were also additional requirements with the password change, such as clients being asked to handover photographic documents via scan.
Bitmarket’s services are no longer available through CoinMarketCap as well. This indicates that it’s a server-wide issue, which is typically the result of an attack from cybercriminals. If this exchange were hacked, it would market another instance in a slew of hacks that have occurred for transactions worldwide. Binance is another considerable exchange that was cut in 2019. Before the year is done, analysts estimate that two to three more significant attacks will occur.
Haydn Franklin
