Crypto-currency exchange Bitfinex, which lost $72 million to hackers last week, on Sunday announced that its customers would lose just over 36 percent of the assets they had on the platform but would be compensated for these losses with tokens of credit.
"..we have arrived at the conclusion that losses must be generalized across all accounts and assets. This is the closest approximation to what would happen in a liquidation context," Bitfinex said.
Upon logging into the platform, Bitfinex customers will see that they have experienced a generalized loss percentage of 36.067%.
The company said it would also give all affected clients a "BFX" token crediting their losses that could be redeemed by the exchange or for shares in iFinex, the exchange's parent company.
Hackers stole 119,756 bitcoin from Bitfinex last week in the second-biggest breach of a crypto-currency exchange ever, in U.S. dollar terms. The hack accounted for about 0.75 percent of all bitcoins in circulation.
Both Bitfinex and outside experts have dismissed suggestions the breach was due to the security of the blockchain, the decentralized ledger that tracks every bitcoin transaction, and which traditional banks are considering adopting to increase the speed and transparency of their transactions. |