Bitfinex Announces It Will Resume Trading Today
The Hong Kong-based bitcoin exchange announced today that it will resume trading after halting the exchange following a security breach that saw $65 million worth of bitcoins stolen earlier this month.
In an announcement , Bitfinex said that trading will recommence at 16:00 UTC today with exchange trading enabled for all currencies and pairs. Deposits and withdrawals will be enabled for BTC, ETC, ETH, and USD. LTH and Tether are expected to follow shortly. Exchange trading will also be enabled for the BFX token on pairs BFXUSD and BFXBTC.
As part of Bitfinex’s recovery process they recently announced that they would be issuing a token on the Omni protocol; however, the update from Bitfinex states that they are still working on some protocol level details.
Earlier this month, the Hong Kong bitcoin exchange became the second biggest exchange to suffer a security breach – after Mt. Gox – which saw the loss of nearly 120,000 bitcoins. As a result of the loss, the company made the unpopular decision to announce that its users would suffer a 36 percent loss to their assets as a result of the theft.
The exchange noted that it had taken significant steps to ensure that it can restore service in a secure environment.
It said:
We have added additional platform and infrastructure security checks; regenerated all encrypted services, including wallets, security tokens, and passwords; moved funds to multisig cold storage; re-evaluated all third-party integrations; performed a comprehensive system audit in order to identify vulnerabilities; and, rebuilt our entire platform on new infrastructure.
Bitfinex added that deposit addresses generated before August 9 19:00 UTC had been invalidated and that users should avoid depositing to these older addresses.
With so many questions remaining the exchange has said that they intend to discuss the theft, the distribution of losses, and its recovery plan in follow-up announcements.
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