Last week saw one of the biggest thefts in cryptocurrency circles yet, after a hacking group stole around $534 million worth of XEM ($58 billion Japanese Yen) from Tokyo’s Coincheck exchange.
Now, if the reports are to be believed, the hacker group is trying to offload the stolen currency on six different exchanges.
The news was broken by the VP of the NEM Foundation, Jeff McDonald, in an interview to Reuters. The NEM foundation is the founder of XEM, the stolen cryptocurrency. He claims to have identified the exchanges where the currency is reportedly being offloaded and is contacting them. It is unlikely, though, that the entire amount will be recovered
XEM is currently the world’s 10th-largest cryptocurrency, while the stolen amount was equal to 5-percent of all XEM supply. The Foundation thinks that the entire amount will likely not be floated into the market, as the market just won’t be able to absorb such a volume.
Divided into Several $83 Packages
The stolen money was broken into smaller batches of $83 each and sent to random accounts, in a bid to avoid triggering anti-money laundering mechanisms, according to NEM Foundation spokeswoman Alexandra Tinsman. The crypto would likely be converted to a different currency before being sold.
The Coincheck hack pushed the Japanese Govt. to announce an investigation into the security of all exchanges within the country in order to prevent such attacks from happening again. Coincheck, in particular, was instructed to improve its security standards.
A new Reuters report claims the officials of the cryptocurrency exchange falsely maintained standards of security to its customers. As it turned out, it decidedly proved to be lax at the exact time it was most needed.
