Coincheck, the Japanese exchange which lost $530 million worth of NEM (XEM) in January has announced that it has commenced trading of XRP and FCT. The cryptocurrency exchange platform which has been in the eye of the storm since January raising doubt that it would resume operation finally did days ago.
According to a release translated from Japanese, the exchange stated:
“In connection with unauthorized remittance of the virtual currency NEM due to unauthorized access occurred on January 26, 2018, the Company suspended the services partially in order to investigate the cause of customer asset protection and unauthorized remittance, and formulated a business improvement plan. In implementing this plan, we have tried to improve our management control system and internal control system. In addition, with the cooperation of external experts who carried out a step-by-step safety audit, we have restarted the service that enables the receipt, purchase and exchange of XRP and FCT.”
The latest additions bring to nine the number of digital currencies traded on Coincheck. The company earlier commenced trading activities on Bitcoin, Ethereum, lisk, NEM, ETC, BCH and LTC.
A Surge in Customer Traffic
The company which earlier expressed doubt in their ability to resume operations stated that they needed a new license to restart operations due to the tough stringent measures imposed on Japanese exchanges by the country’s regulators.
The statement on its website seen on Monday November 26 stated that aside the introduction of the two digital tokens the company is also introducing other support services.
The release also said that the firm is experiencing a surge in customers eager to resume trading using the cryptocurrency exchange platform which was among the most popular in Japan.
In a twist, the release inferred that with the reorganization of its operations that Coincheck will use its discretion and may temporarily suspend operations as it works towards stabilization of all its operations.
The Hack At Beginning of the Year
It will be recalled that the January hack of Coincheck was announced by Long Wong, the NEM Foundation president in a Tweet after it became obvious that something was wrong at the exchange when they rapidly suspended trading operations.
It was then thought that the hackers stole not just NEM but XRP also, but it was later confirmed that a large withdrawal of XRP from the exchange was the idea of the Ripple Labs in a preventive move.
The hack which caused the value of XEM to plunge to $0.80 from $1.01 holds the unenviable record of being the biggest loss to hackers since the Mt Gox hack of 2014. It also made Japanese regulator to toughen its oversight guidelines on exchanges.
Coincheck founded in 2014 was a prominent feature in Japanese coin trade until the January hack. The exchange had a policy of encouraging traders and investors to leave their digital currencies in the online wallet of the exchange.
The policy is contrary to expert opinion that says it is risky to leave any substantial volumes of digital tokens in an online wallet.
Interestingly, the firm decided to bear the loss of the coins by reimbursing clients who lost their XEM coins in the hack.
The Coincheck NEM hack brought to fore the irreversible nature of the decentralized networks as the NEM network insisted it would not conduct a hard fork to recover the tokens.
