While the dust from the $534 million theft of NEM from Coincheck earlier this month has far from settled, some clues are starting to emerge regarding the stolen tokens. Jeff McDonald, Vice President of NEM Foundation, has warned that the hackers have started to offload some of the stolen coins across multiple exchanges.
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Last week, the theft from the Japanese crypto Exchange led it to freeze trading, causing outrage amongst traders as unsubstantiated rumors abounded of the theft of millions of XRP tokens.
Since then, Japan’s Financial Services Agency reported that it will be fining Coincheck for its security lapses. This past Sunday, Coincheck released a statement saying that it would be returning $0.81 for each dollar of the stolen NEM using internal funding, but how or when that will happen (or whether Coincheck has the funds to cover the loss) is still unclear. Coincheck halted trading in all currencies except Bitcoin following the attack.
The FSA has ordered Coincheck to submit an official incident report as well as a plan for preventing similar incidences in the future by mid-February. Meanwhile, some details have started to emerge this week surrounding the theft. According to McDonald, the stolen coins have been traced to an unidentified account, per a Reuters report.
Hackers have begun to spend the stolen tokens across no less than six exchanges. Unfortunately, the location of the account was not yet verified, nor was the amount of stolen coins spent, adding a further layer of ambiguity to the report.
McDonald is reportedly contacting these exchanges for more information. Finance Magnates will update the story as it continues to develop.
