Hackers stole $31 million in Bitcoins—Tether claims

Bitcoin has been all-time high during the past few weeks, above $8000 is something unbelievable for a digital currency. But recently, Tether—a company which offers services in exchanging fiat currency into token—said today that hackers nicked around $31 million.

Tether is a US based company which operates USDT, a cryptocurrency asset which is backed by US dollar. The company has revealed that $30,950,010 worth of USDT was stolen from its core treasury wallet through an external malicious attack by hackers.

However, Tether has flagged the tokens from their end—this means the tokens would be tracked and prevent the holders from exchanging them through its service, the company is working on recovering the loss it incurred.

Tether has also suspended the backend wallet service for partners due to this hack, the company says it will probe the incident meanwhile it will roll out the Omni Core update until then the service would be suspended. The update would prevent the stolen coins from recirculating into the ecosystem by simply locking them into the hacker’s wallet.

A year ago crypto exchange Bitfinex a Tether’s partner lost 119,756 bitcoins which worth $72 million at that time and valued $950 million today.

According to the Coindesk report, the incident brings in more questions about the relationship between Tether and exchange Bitfinex. Both the companies are rumored to share the same owners and have been accused of supporting each other in order to manipulate the market. The theories are circulating on the internet that the new attack could be the inside job.

Bitcoin was also affected when the news started floating on the web, but later bitcoin recovered quickly. Bitcoin currently stands at $8137.15 at the time of writing.