Crypto Exchange Bithumb Wins Lawsuit Against Investor Over $355K Hack

Bithumb, the major South Korean crypto exchange has successfully won a lawsuit against an investor who sued the company for losing about $355,000 after an alleged hack according to the latest digital currency news.

According to the reports from the local financial newspaper The Korea Economic Daily, the 30-year-old investor and civil servant Ahn Park was allegedly a victim of a hack attack when his Bithumb account was targeted and resulted in a nearly $400 million loss.

After making his deposit, Mr. Park believes that a hacker had compromised his account and exchange fiat currencies for Ethereum and he was eventually left with 11 cents.

Mr. Park claimed that Bithumb failed to offer the needed security and failed to prove they were adequate to fulfill their responsibilities and he argued that Bithumb’s activities are similar as the services offered in the financial sector and should thus be a subject to the security requirements under the electronic commerce transaction brokers.

The judge pointed noted:

“In general, virtual currencies cannot be used to buy goods and it is difficult to guarantee their exchange for cash because their value is very volatile. [Cryptocurrencies] are mainly used for speculative means, [and it] is not reasonable to apply [Korea’s] Electronic Financial Transactions Act to a defendant who brokers virtual currency transactions without the permission of [South Korean regulator] the Financial Services Commission.”

The South Korean exchange has suffered a hack attack back in June where about $30 million worth of different cryptocurrencies were stolen.

Bithumb also was the center of attention after denying allegations of artificially inflating the trade volumes since an analytics service CER had accused the exchange of using fake wash-trading.