The New Zealand Police have returned Cryptopia’s building, but the exchange won’t resume activity yet.
The New Zealand police have returned the office building back to recently hacked crypto exchange Cryptopia and granted permission to resume trading. However, the exchange is not ready to renew its activity, according to a message purportedly sent by a Cryptoptia staff member on the official Discord channel on Feb. 24.
After the hack that led to more than $16.1 million stolen from the crypto exchange, New Zealand police had launched an investigation along with international law enforcement to track the hackers.
The initial hacking attack began on Jan. 15 and reportedly lasted about two weeks, with funds removed from tens of thousands of the exchange’s Ethereum (ETH) wallets.
According to the statement pinned on the Cryptopia Discord channel by an admin, while the local authorities are not constraining the exchange from resuming its activity, the company doesn’t intend to do so immediately. Explaining why, the message notes:
“While the Police statement that they are no longer constraining our return to operations and trading, it would be extremely reckless for us to do this until we can fully identify the losses and ensure that the balance is absolutely secure.”
The statement also points out that in New Zealand legislation, it is illegal for a company to allow reckless trading that places creditor assets and property at risk.
In other judicial news, Cointelegraph reported today that United States’ law enforcement has recovered and returned over $104,000 stolen from the cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex, which experienced a hack of 120,000 BTC in 2016.
Also recently, news broke that Israel-based crypto brokerage Coinmama — which allows users to purchase Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum using a credit card — has suffered a major data breach affecting 450,000 of its users.
