The Japanese Financial Services Agency (FSA) carried out an inspection of the cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck after the big hacker attack against the exchange that took place last week. During the hacker attack, a large amount of NEM coins was stolen, worth more than 500 million US dollars. The inspection took place in the Coincheck’s offices in Tokyo. It began at eight in the morning local time on Thursday and, according to the statement given by Taro Aso, the Minister of Finance of Japan, it was the first time that the Japanese financial regulator raids the premises of a cryptocurrency exchange. The minister also said: “The investigation is being conducted to protect the users of the trading platform.” Aso demanded from Coincheck to treat its clients adequately and issued an order to all the other cryptocurrency exchanges in the country to file a report about their risk management policies.
The experts from the FSA are investigating the condition of the offices of Coincheck to verify that the company has sufficient funds to refund the clients affected by the hacker attack.
The theft of more than 530 million dollars in NEM coins took place on January 26th and around 260,000 users of Coincheck were affected by the hacker attack. After the attack, Coincheck announced it would reimburse all the affected users in Japanese yens. The estimated amount to be reimbursed is around 46 billion yens.
According to NHK, a Japanese news agency, Coincheck might face a lawsuit from at least 10 clients in the near future. Some affected users hired a group of lawyers and will present a lawsuit to the Tokyo District Court in the middle of February.
The goal of the lawsuit is to demand the reimbursement of their lost cryptocurrencies, since the cryptocurrency exchange did not specify the date and other details of the proposed reimbursement solution.
Of course, this is not the first theft happening on a cryptocurrency exchange. At the end of last year, YouBit, a South Korean cryptocurrency exchange, declared bankruptcy after a second hacker attack in one year. The first attack took place in April, 2017, when almost 4 million bitcoins were stolen. The second attack against YouBit left the exchange without 17% of its cryptocurrencies, which finally led to the bankruptcy and closure of the company. This attack also caused a drop in the price of bitcoin.
