Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Prices Recover After Coincheck Hack
It is a sign of the growing maturity of the cryptocurrency ecosystem that even the largest theft of coins in its history failed to crash markets. The overall market capitalization for cryptocurrencies dipped briefly to $507.9 billion, a drop of 9% from its high 4 hours earlier, last Friday morning as news of a hack on Japan’s Coincheck exchange spread through the markets.
But it has recovered since and almost touched the $600 billion mark Monday morning. At 14:44 UTC on January 29, the cryptocurrency market was valued at $573.4 billion.
NEM, the digital currency affected by the hack, was trading at $0.96, down 6.44% from its price 24 hours ago. The coin is down by 7.69% since the start of this year. It remains to be seen whether markets have fully absorbed the hack’s shock or if there might be a delayed reaction to it later. For example, news of Mt. Gox’s bankruptcy filing in 2014 sent bitcoin into a prolonged swoon for the rest of that year.