South Korea’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, UpBit, was raided by ten investigators and local police for alleged fraud this morning. Chosun, a local news source, was the first to report[1] on the incident. Upbit is currently the fourth largest[2] cryptocurrency exchange in the world by 24-hour trade volume.
The company has responded saying that all customers’ assets kept on their platform are safe, and all trades and withdrawals are running normally. UpBit has released the following statement on its website[3]:
“Upbit is currently under investigation by the prosecution, and we are working diligently. Upbit services such as all transactions and withdrawals are operating normally.”
UpBit is under investigation for transferring customer funds from their accounts to an ‘executive’ account. According to Chosun, the investigators seized hard drives and accounting records between the dates of May 10th and May 11th.
Upbit allegedly “pretends to hold [virtual currencies] without holding virtual currencies,” the news outlet noted.
Cryptocurrency Sell Off
The total cryptocurrency market has dipped below the $400 billion mark and is dropping rapidly.
Source: CoinMarketCap[4]
At press time, Bitcoin (BTC) is trading at $8,571.92, a coin and Ethereum is trading at $676.85. Most of the coins in the top 100 are seeing double-digit percentage losses, a lot of the top ten are nearing the 20% loss mark.
There are varied opinions across Twitter from crypto enthusiasts as to what occurred and what investors responses should have been.
A user with the twitter handle @HardolNakamoto said:
Koreans are the insider trading kings. Take out leveraged short positions, release FUD articles at the perfect moment, dump the entire market, buy back, rinse and repeat. Even their former President was
