Bithumb, South Korea’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange was hacked. Today, the cryptocurrency market added $8 billion to its valuation following Bitcoin’s slight gain, recovering from the Bithumb hack within 24 hours.
The current average Bitcoin transaction fee is $2.53 per transaction. This value represents a 315 percent increase from the previous day’s transaction fee.
Bitrefill CEO, Sergej Kotliar, claims that this latest spike is due to Bithumb clearing its hot wallet. On Twitter, Kotliar explained:
“Possibly related to their hack would explain them [Bithumb] overpaying 100x on fees for consolidation. This does put [a] strain on the whole network, and everybody’s fee estimators.”
BTC’s resilience has ensured the technical charts are retaining short-term bullish bias, and is trading above the support of the 50-candle moving average (MA) on the 4-hour chart, currently at $6,545.
Bithumb is the sixth-ranked cryptocurrency exchange platform by daily volume and the biggest in South Korea. It has yet to reveal the specific coins stolen in the hack.
Interestingly, earlier in the month, Bithumb was cleared of tax evasion charges in South Korea and was ordered to pay a $28 million tax bill, an amount that’s almost equal to the funds stolen, which raised suspicion among some crypto commentators. However,, after deep inspection, it was cleared of tax audit.