Bitfinex, a Hong Kong-based digital currency exchange, has told users that they will lose 36% of their assets following a cyber attack which lost the company $65m (£49m).
Customers, who use the digital currency exchange to store bitcoins used in transactions, stand to take the fall for the losses incurred by the company, with the $65m (£49m) loss to be shared across the site’s users. Explaining this move, Bitfinex said in a statement:
“Due to the indiscriminate nature of the attack, we have decided to generalize losses across all accounts. Upon logging into the platform, customers will see that they have experienced a generalized loss percentage of 36.067%. In a later announcement we will explain in full detail the methodology used to compute these losses.”
However, as some sort of compensation, Bitfinex intend to issue customers with a ‘BFX token’, which will be equal to their personal losses. Although the specific conditions associated with these tokens are yet to be released by the company, the tokens will eventually be exchanged for repayment by Bitfinex of for shares in iFinex Inc, its parent company.
A total of 119,756 bitcoins were stolen by hackers in the August 2 cyber attack, with the site shut down in the immediate aftermath of the attack. The site has yet to resume normal operations, with trading, depositing, and withdrawing all still disabled at the time of writing.
The cyber attack was also used as bait by enterprising hackers, who used phishing emails to lure unsuspecting Bitfinex users. The email was sent from @ibitfinex, with only the additional ‘i’ separating it from the official email address of the exchange.
