Popular cryptocurrency exchanges Poloniex and Deribit recently announced that they have suspended activities for a short period. These exchanges are apparently experiencing technical issues with their platform. Trading at Poloniex has been disabled and is in maintenance mode now.
We are currently experiencing technical difficulty. Trading has been disabled and the site has been placed into maintenance mode.
— Poloniex Exchange (@Poloniex) January 17, 2019
Deribit explains that they saw locked order books between 19.31 and 20.01 UTC. Subsequently, trading had been halted. Luckily for Deribit users trading books are now open again. The platform will investigate further into these issues.
We experienced locked order books between 19.41-20.01 UTC, where all trading had been halted. Trading has resumed, all books are open, and we are investigating. All books are open for trading again.
— Deribit (@DeribitExchange) January 17, 2019
This is something that has been worrying users around the world. Interestingly, this has not been the first case when exchanges have witnessed such instances.
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Other Instances of Hacks
On 15th January , TCU reported a New Zealand based cryptocurrency exchange Cryptopia was hacked. This resulted in the exchange losing millions of dollars. Furthermore, the security experts are currently working in close collaboration with the exchange to minimize the damages. Cryptopia explains that till the investigation is over the platform will remain under maintenance.
— Cryptopia Exchange (@Cryptopia_NZ) January 15, 2019
Last few years saw several crypto exchanges being hacked which resulted in several users losing precious assets.
Interestingly, both exchanges, Poloniex and Deribit have been affected during the same hour. This has also raised concerns among crypto users.
It is imperative to store digital assets on hardware wallets rather than exchanges. Furthermore, hardware wallets are currently the safest way to store virtual currencies. The Bitfinex hack is one example of the several dangers of hot storage. In the hack a total of $72 million worth of BTC got stolen by hackers, leading to a 20% drop in its value within a day.
Also Read: Hacked!!!! Cryptopia Exchange falls Victim to Security Breach
