Coincheck will start compensating NEM hacker victims next week
Japanese cryptocurrency operator Coincheck has confirmed that it will begin to compensate users affected by the theft of NEM of US $ 530 million in January, starting next week.
While details are scarce today, Coincheck CEO Koichiro Wada and operations chief Yusuke Otsuka said they will be announced soon.
On January 26, executives confirmed widespread rumors of a massive theft of around 526 million NEM tokens, worth more than US $ 530 million at that time, which is the largest cryptocurrency theft so far.
While raising a temporary freeze on fiduciary recalls in February - clients withdrew 40.1 billion yen (US $ 372 million) in a single day - Coincheck confirmed that it would compensate each stolen NEM token at 88 yen (0.83 USD).
After the incident, Japan's financial regulator, the Financial Services Agency (FSA), intervened to inspect the security measures of the platform and its fiscal capacity to reimburse the victims of the theft.
As the investigation continued, the operator's clients also filed class actions demanding that Coincheck expedite the reimbursement of their losses.
Coincheck's plan to reimburse users occurs in the midst of a broader effort by the FSA to examine more closely the crypto operators in Japan to try to prevent events like the one that happened from happening again.
According to new legislation, which recognized Bitcoin as a payment method as of April 2017, Japanese exchanges must register with the FSA and comply with the guidelines to operate in the country. Sixteen of the 32 domestic exchanges have been registered so far.
After an extensive investigation of the remaining unlicensed exchanges in Japan, the FSA has administratively sanctioned seven; two of them were ordered to suspend services, while all are mandated to submit a written plan for safety improvements before March 22.
Meanwhile, Coincheck insists that it still hopes to obtain a license from the FSA after receiving the "business improvement order" from the regulator. Coincheck executives confirmed that the platform will resume the trading and trading of some cryptocurrencies next week.