One of the biggest cryptocurrency exchanges in South Korea issued a statement on its website revealing that $31 million worth of digital assets have been stolen.

At the time of writing, customer deposits and withdrawals are suspended, with the crypto exchange platform launching an investigation to determine what happened and the extent of the damage.

Customer deposits and withdrawals are currently suspended as the exchange begins its investigation to determine what happened.

Incidentally, another South Korean exchange was hit this month, just as it was revealed that the Government delayed regulation of cryptocurrencies due to fears of the move being seen as the Govt legitimising the emergent market. Just last week, Coinrail lost an estimated $40 million in a hack on June 10, dragging Bitcoin down 10% within 24 hours.

Bitcoin is trading at $6,700, down 0.5% from its 24-hour high of $6,762, according to WorldCoinIndex.

But life, it seems, isn’t without a sense of irony. On June 15, Bithumb tweeted that it was beefing up its security system – too little too late.

Bithumb suspended deposits around 00:53 UTC. All assets were moved to cold storage, which are inaccessible due to the wallets not having any connection to the internet.

Customers are awaiting updates from Bithumb which stated that it will cover losses sustained as a result of the hack. However, the tweet has since been deleted.

“It has been confirmed that some cipher money of around 35 billion won was stolen from late night to early morning today. Please be assured that all of your lost passwords will be covered by the company and we will inform you that all of your assets are being held and moved to a secure cold wallet.

…However, this loss will be compensated by Bithumb’s own reservoir, and all of our assets are securely saved in Bithumb’s cold wallet.”

Bithumb is the sixth biggest cryptocurrency exchange in the world by trading volume, with South Korea ranking as the one of the world’s largest markets for Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.