Last week Friday Japan-based virtual currency exchange Coincheck suffered a massive breach in which cryptocurrency worth $530 million were stolen in the heist. Now the cryptocurrency exchange has said that they will refund about $400 million to customers.
Following the hack that occurred on Friday, Coincheck has been slammed by various Japanese media outlets who labelled the company's management of virtual currencies as "sloppy", saying the company has "expanded business by putting safety second".
The company said on Sunday that they will use their own funds to reimburse about $400 million to all 260,000 customers who lost their holdings of NEM. The loss recorded in this hack exceed the $480 million worth of bitcoins that were stolen from MtGox in 2014.
Last year April, Japan proclaimed virtual currencies as a legal tender and the proclamation made about 10,000 businesses in Japan to accept bitcoin and bitFlyer.
According to JPbitcoin.com, Japan alone dominated bitcoin transactions in December 2017, recording nearly one third of the total global bitcoin transactions..
Local media says the Japanese Financial Services Agency (FSA) has sent a notice to the country's 30 firms that operates virtual currency, urging them to upgrade their security so as to avoid future possible attacks.
Still on that, the financial watchdog is also expected to take disciplinary actions on Coincheck as stated under the financial law.