Bitcoin, Ethereum price dives after $30m Tether hack revealed

Bitcoin took a plunge after an exchange revealed it was hacked and $30m stolen.

More than $400 was wiped from the value of the cryptocurrency which dropped five percent overnight after Tether, an exchange where cryptocurrencies are pegged to traditional currencies, said it had discovered the security flaw and theft.

The price has recovered somewhat and was trading at $8,201.91 at pixel time, back above the $8,000 mark it first cracked on Monday.

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And Ethereum also plunged a similar percentage to $350.69. It was trading at $363.64 at pixel time.

“Yesterday, we discovered that funds were improperly removed from the Tether treasury wallet through malicious action by an external attacker,” said Tether

“$30,950,010 USDT was removed from the Tether Treasury wallet on November 19, 2017 and sent to an unauthorized bitcoin address. As Tether is the issuer of the USDT managed asset, we will not redeem any of the stolen tokens, and we are in the process of attempting token recovery to prevent them from entering the broader ecosystem.”

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Tether, base in the Isle of Man and Hong Kong, was founded by well-known bitcoin and blockchain entrepreneur Brock Pierce, a former child actor.

As well as cracking the $8,000 mark this week, bitcoin also charged past that and hitting a fresh all-time above $8,200.