Hackers stole $62million worth of bitcoin yesterday as its value jumped to a record high of $14,000.
Slovenian bitcoin marketplace NiceHash said the total contents of its bitcoin wallet were taken.
It did not say how much was stolen but users shared the company’s wallet address on Twitter which showed it had 4,736.42 bitcoins.
The company has reported the incident to police and told users to change their passwords.
Hackers stole $62million worth of bitcoin yesterday as its value jumped to a record high of $14,000
It said in a statement: ‘Our payment system was compromised and the contents of the NiceHash Bitcoin wallet have been stolen. We are working to verify the precise number of bitcoin taken.’
Bitcoin has long been a target for hackers. In 2014 almost a million bitcoins – worth around $700million at the time – were stolen from Japanese bitcoin exchange Mt Gox, rendering it bankrupt.
Before the hack, NiceHash had been suffering problems, with many bitcoin owners posting panicked comments on its social media accounts.
It comes after the price of bitcoin surged to over $14,100.74, gaining $1,000 in less than a day.
That compares with a value below $1,000 at the beginning of the year.
Bitcoin is the world’s most popular digital currency. Such currencies are not tied to a bank or government and allow users to spend money anonymously.
They are basically lines of computer code that are digitally signed each time they are traded.
Miners of bitcoins and other virtual currencies help keep the systems honest with a blockchain, a global running tally of every transaction that prevents cheaters from spending the same digital coin twice.
NiceHash is a cryptocurrency mining application that matches those with spare computing to power to miners wanting to create new coins.
Slovenian bitcoin marketplace NiceHash said the total contents of its bitcoin wallet were taken
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