(AP photo) JTOKYO: At 2.57am on Friday morning in Tokyo, someone hacked into the digital wallet of Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck Inc and pulled off one of the biggest heists in history. Three days later, the theft of nearly $500 million in digital tokens is still reverberating through cryptocurrency markets and policy circles around the world. The episode, disclosed by Coincheck executives at a hastily arranged press conference on Friday night, has heightened calls for stricter oversight at a time when many governments are working out how to regulate the booming cryptocurrency exchange industry. Coincheck, one of Japan’s biggest cryptocurrency exchanges, will use its own capital to reimburse customers who lost money in the theft, according to a statement posted on its website Sunday. It was exactly the kind of scene that the country’s financial regulator had been hoping to avoid when it introduced a licensing system for cryptocurrency exchanges last April.

Source: Bangkok Post January 29, 2018 06:00 UTC