Russian cryptocurrency exchange Livecoin claims it suffered a “carefully planned attack,” but the community suspects an exit scam
Livecoin, a little-known Bitcoin Trader has suddenly suspended operations following an alleged incident on Christmas Eve. According to Livecoin’s homepage, the exchange suffered a “carefully planned attack” in which the platform lost control of all of its servers, backends, and nodes.
The exchange urged customers to stop using its services, including deposits, trading and APIs. “We were not able to suspend our service in time. Our information channel was also compromised. At the moment, we partially control the front-end, so we were able to post this announcement,” the website’s homepage explains.
Livecoin added that it is doing everything it can to regain control of its servers, and promised the introduction of a security update “in the coming days.” In addition, the exchange said it is cooperating with “local law enforcement.”
According to some reports, the incident occurred on the night of December 23-24.
Hackers allegedly managed to take control of Livecoin’s infrastructure and change the prices on the exchange to incredibly high values.
The co-founder of the YellowBlock website, known as “Cryptorangutang,” reported that Bitcoin (BTC) surpassed $320,000 per coin on the platform on December 24. “Whatever is going on, it’s not a good idea to try to exploit the situation, most likely your funds will be locked up,” he explained on Twitter.
According to comments posted by exchange users in Livecoin’s unofficial Telegram group, the platform is not operational despite the brief opening of a login page. Some users on Reddit have suggested that Livecoin’s “hack” may actually be hiding a classic exit scam.
At the time of writing, Livecoin’s trading volumes are not available on major crypto monitoring websites such as CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap. As of December 24, Livecoin was ranked 173rd in the crypto exchange rankings, with a daily trading volume of about $16 million.