More than $10 billion was erased from the crypto market in a matter of hours yesterday, after it was revealed that South Korea’s biggest exchange got hacked.

However, the market has since recovered, adding $8 billion to its valuation following Bitcoin’s slight gain, recovering from the Bithumb hack within a 24-hour window.

Why the recovery?

Yesterday, flagship cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, and Bitcoin Cash fell by about 2% as the market reacted to the new of the Bithumb hack, in turn leading a more intense downward movement of tokens and smaller cryptocurrencies.

The minor correction was probably triggered by the Bithumb hack, which hindered the corrective rally and the short-term Bitcoin surge from $6,300 to $6,700. Investors in both the global cryptocurrency market and the exchange market of South Korea started a widespread sell-off of digital assets, fearing the hack trigger a short-term downtrend.

As reported yesterday, the Bithumb team came out with an official statement only to delete it later. It read:

“We checked that some of cryptocurrencies valued about $30,000,000 was stolen. Those stolen cryptocurrencies will be covered from Bithumb and all of assets are being transferring to cold wallet.”

The exchange company made more than $300 million in net profit last year, so $30 million shouldn’t be that big a hit for a company that’s valued at over a billion dollars. Still, it remains to be seen whether the company is serious about its initial statement and whether investors will lose their money due to the lack of security by the compromised exchange.

The company was asked by regulators to take a more organized way of dealing with the incident. As such, investors that used the compromised platform can wait for a full announcement in the near future.

On June 20th, analysts were highly optimistic with regards to the short-term trend of the cryptocurrency market, largely due to the positive movement of BTC and ETH. BTC also avoided a dip below the $6,000 mark after it bounced relatively quickly from the $6,200 mark.

A number of momentum indicators including the moving average convergence divergence (MACD) and Relative Strength Index (RSI), along with both simple and exponential moving averages indicated short-term optimism and momentum for BTC at the time of writing.

What’s next for Bitcoin?

Due to low volume in the entire market, it’s difficult to discern whether the bears have lost control. That said, the past 9 days has seen Bitcoin consolidate and secure momentum with consecutive daily buying candles, some of which seemed natural due to their not being any irregular spikes in transaction volumes.

Throughout May 29 to June 8 and from May 17 to May 21, BTC had demonstrated short-term optimism. But whale-like sell-offs, perhaps triggered by the lack of transaction volume, led Bitcoin towards sideways trading and to eventually drop from the $8,000 mark.

In the short term, it’s still possible for Bitcoin to drop below $6,000 mark, especially if a large sell-off were to be recorded in the next few days. This would fall in line with our previous analysis about Bitcoin not having “bottomed-out” just yet. Then again, if BTC rebounds to $7,000 and breaks a that key resistance level, it’s like that Bitcoin will initiate a mid-term rally.

Update

According to a fresh report by CCN, investors who lost money during the heist will be fully compensated.