Livecoin trade goes offline after Bitcoin value reportedly exceeds $320K

Livecoin, a lesser-known Russian cryptocurrency trade, has abruptly halted operations within the aftermath of an alleged hacker assault on Christmas day. In keeping with Livecoin’s essential web page, the trade has suffered a “rigorously deliberate assault” inflicting the platform to lose management of all of its servers, backend and nodes.

The trade urged its clients to cease utilizing its providers together with deposits, buying and selling and API. “We weren’t in a position to cease our service in time. Our information channels have been compromised as nicely. For the time being, we partially management frontend, and so we’re in a position to place this announcement,” Livecoin’s essential web page reads.

Livecoin stated that it’s working laborious to retrieve management of its servers, promising to offer a safety replace “within the subsequent few days.” The trade additionally claimed that it’s cooperating with “native police authorities.”

In keeping with some stories, the incident occurred on the night time between Dec. 23 and Dec. 24. Hackers have apparently managed to take over Livecoin’s infrastructure and modify the costs on the trade to abnormally excessive values.

A co-founder of YellowBlock, a crypto academic web site, referred to as “Cryptorangutang” stated that Bitcoin (BTC) exceeded $320,000 per coin on the platform on Dec. 24. “No matter is occurring, I don’t advocate attempting to make $ on this, very doubtless you’ll get your funds caught,” he wrote on Twitter.

In keeping with feedback of trade customers on Livecoin’s unofficial Telegram group, the trade isn’t working on the time of publishing regardless of the trade having briefly opened a login web page. Some Reddit customers additionally urged that Livecoin’s “hack” may very well be a basic exit rip-off.

Livecoin didn’t instantly reply to Cointelegraph’s request for remark. The trade is outwardly not actively operating any official social media accounts on Twitter or Telegram.

On the time of publishing, Livecoin’s buying and selling volumes will not be out there on main crypto monitoring web sites like CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap. As of Dec. 24, Livecoin was reportedly ranked 173 amongst crypto exchanges, with a every day buying and selling quantity of round $16 million.