Italian crypto exchange claims to have lost $170 million to hackers

The firm’s claims are doubtful owing to its old records.

The Italian exchange BitGrail has lost $170 million worth of Nano tokens, a digital coin which was called RaiBlocks previously. As affirmed by the WSJ, if the news of the hack comes true, it will be the second massive hack a cryptocurrency exchange has suffered in 2018, after the recent stealing of $400 million worth of crypto coins from Coincheck.

According to the WSJ report, BitGrail announced on its website that it has lost 17 million of Nano tokens to fraudulent transactions and it has already reported them to authorities. It has suspended all withdrawals and deposits “in order to conduct further verifications.”

The claim of the firm is doubtful to most of the media outlets hinting towards the recent suspicious moves by the exchange. Back in January, the exchange stopped all withdrawals and deposits of Nano, as well as the Lisk and CryptoForecast tokens. And a while back, BitGrail announced to enforce identity verification and anti-money laundering protocols for its users, and potentially block non-European users, without any deal with government currencies or banks.

As of now, it has been disclosed that there was a withdrawal bug that was crediting customers with a double balance allowing thefts to diminish the wallet over months. Traders took to the Twitterverse to connect the bug with the exist scam theory, some saying that bugs like that would most likely be recognized and exploited by someone on the inside.

According to Cornel Professor Emin Gun Siren’s tweet,

“Whoa, if true, this is mind-boggling. It’s the equivalent of “you have access to the entire working capital of our bank. please check your own balance and don’t draw more than you should.”

Apparently, Bitgrail had mismanaged customer funds and is now claiming that they had been hacked in order to cover up their mistakes.

Image Source: Coin Telegraph