Cryptopia, the exchange that suffered a debilitating hack two months ago that saw some $16 million worth of tokens stolen, is working on staging a recovery that even Rocky Balboa would be proud of. The exchange has been offline since the hack was revealed on January 14, but an email sent out today to users has reinforced the message that the team may be down but they are by no means out. Instead they are “100% committed to reopening the exchange, bigger and better and to continue trading.”
We will be sending out an email to all impacted customers over the next day, a copy of this email can be found here: https://t.co/NODRiDsrxU
— Cryptopia Exchange (@Cryptopia_NZ) March 18, 2019
Fast Work from Cryptopia
The Cryptopia team got their hands back on the site on Valentine’s Day following the culmination of the police investigation, since then they have been assessing the impact of the crime and working out how to get operations back up and running. Tweets sent shortly afterward revealed that the stolen funds came to some 9.4% of Cryptopia’s total holdings, despite attackers coming back for more just days after the initial attack.
The team announced a plan to open a read-only site to enable customers to check their balances, which they did on March 4 after transferring the remaining funds to secure servers. Despite the amount of work required to repair the site and resume trading, the recent email states that the team expects to achieve this “by the end of the month”. This would be quite some achievement and would render the obituaries that flooded social media after news of the hack broke premature.
Support from Customers
The incident does not seem to have dampened the enthusiasm of Cryptopia customers, with the recent notifications garnering chiefly positive responses from those looking forward to getting back into their accounts:
Thank you for the update. Great to see trading will go on at the end of the month probably….we are still with you!
— CryptoTweet (@CryptoTweet6) March 18, 2019
Have some coins but none was stolen. But other than that I think @Cryptopia_NZ is handling the situation nicely. Hopefully customers who are damaged will be reimbursed as well.
— niemand (@niemandmaster) March 18, 2019
Those logging in to find their accounts empty will be pleased to know that Cryptopia plans rebates of lost funds, which is, for most, the biggest piece of the puzzle. Whether they are looking forward to getting their funds back so they can actually trade on Cryptopia or if they are simply pleased that they can now move their funds off the site remains to be seen. Regardless, the work by the Cryptopia team to repair the site and their damaged reputation has to be applauded.
