A man has pleaded guilty to stealing almost $250,000 worth of cryptocurrencies and customer data from international currency exchange Cryptopia. Cryptopia Ltd is a Christchurch-based cryptocurrency exchange which, at its peak, employed more than 80 staff and had more than 1.4 million customers worldwide. Unlike an eftpos card, the public address and private keys for a crypto wallet are directly linked to each other by a complex mathematical algorithm. After the liquidation, all Cryptopia workers’ contracts were terminated but the employee kept his copy of Cryptopia's private keys. On September 10, the employee emailed David Ruscoe and Tom Aspin of Grant Thornton and admitted stealing the bitcoin, as well as another cryptocurrency worth about $10,000.

Source: Stuff July 04, 2021 23:26 UTC