Bithumb, South Korea's largest Bitcoin and Ethereum trading venue, has suffered a cyber security breach leading to the personal data of 30,000 users being stolen by hackers. The exchange has acknowledged on its site that the data was stolen but says it was done from an employee's personal computer and not related to the company's internal systems.
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While the exchange wallets and servers were not directly hacked, the thieves did use the personal details to siphon large amounts of cryptocurrency from some users' accounts, according to local media reports.
This incident will likely lead to stronger calls for the supervision of crypto exchanges in South Korea by the authorities. Just this Monday one lawmaker announced that he will be introducing three bills in July designed to regulate the sector.
Background
After the Chinese central bank forced all the major bitcoin exchanges in China to change their way of doing business, dramatically hurting their trading volumes, other Asian markets rose up to fill the void left by the former top market.
South Korea is now at the top of the global cryptocurrency trading rankings with three local exchanges, Bithumb, Korbit and Coinone, among the top fifteen biggest venues for Bitcoin and Ethereum in the world. Given this, any major step by the Korean government regarding cryptocurrency trading could have a major impact on the global marketplace.
In news from the other half of the Korean peninsula, we recently saw that Dennis Rodman’s peace mission to North Korea was sponsored by PotCoin.
