On January 14, 2019, the New Zealand cryptocurrency exchange Cryptopia was hacked. The platform's team confirmed the security breach and stated that the exchange's losses are "significant". The Cryptopia crypto exchange is currently carrying out "unscheduled system maintenance" and all services have been halted. The platform's team confirmed the security breach and stated that the exchange's losses are "significant".

The announcement was published on January 15 on the exchange's official Twitter page. "We apologize for the delay in publishing information and thank you for your patience. Yesterday, January 14, 2019, a hack occurred on the Cryptopia exchange, which led to significant losses. After exchange staff discovered the security breach, unscheduled system maintenance began. At the same time, we began to assess the damage caused."

The total amount of damage is not specified in the statement. However, 43 hours ago a transaction of the cryptocurrency ETH took place, as a result of which 19,390 ETH were transferred from the Cryptopia wallet to an unknown address. The value of the transferred ether is just over $2.5 million.

When attempting to access the Cryptopia website, users are shown the following message: It is worth noting that the exchange's first official Twitter post regarding technical maintenance was made on January 13 and reads: "We are currently undergoing unscheduled maintenance, we are working to restore service as soon as possible. We will keep you informed."

Cryptopia became the first cryptocurrency exchange to be hacked in 2019. The cryptocurrency community quickly took note of this, as the popular bitcoin supporter Whale Panda (@WhalePanda) stated that the exchange was rather insignificant. He also added that it is somewhat "interesting" that the attack occurred during a "bear" market, when small exchanges are trying to stay afloat, hinting that the possibility of an inside job cannot be ruled out. So far the news has had no effect on the market. At the same time, the platform's team made it clear that the relevant government agencies, the New Zealand police and the high-tech crime unit have been informed and are jointly working on investigating this matter.

Over the past year there have been two major attacks on cryptocurrency exchanges. From the Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck in January 2018, NEM tokens worth 58 billion yen were stolen - almost $533 million. And a month later, the cryptocurrency exchange BitGrail announced the theft of 17,000,000 XRB (Nano / RaiBlocks) - that's more than $160 million at the market rate at the time. As a result, the exchange went bankrupt, and recently law firms filed a lawsuit against it on behalf of Nano investors.