Russian crypto exchange Livecoin is shutting down after a claimed attack that caused a $3.3 million loss to users

Exchanges • January 18, 2021, 8:15AM EST
UPDATED: January 18, 2021, 8:26AM EST
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Russian cryptocurrency exchange Livecoin has announced that it is shutting down after witnessing a "carefully planned attack" last month.

"Our service has been damaged hard in technical and financial way," said Livecoin on Saturday. "There is no way to continue operative business in these conditions, so we take a hard decision to close the business and paying the remaining funds to clients."

It is not clear how much money is left. Livecoin also never announced how much money its users lost in the so-called server attack. According to The Block Research, users lost at least $3.3 million worth of funds at the attack time. The current value of those funds is more than $5.4 million.

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In terms of coins and tokens, Livecoin users lost 106 bitcoin (BTC), 380 ether (ETH), 236 bitcoin cash (BCH), 567,000 XRP, 66.8 million DOGE, 56,000 Tether (USDT), and some other ERC-20 tokens, per The Block Research.

Data on the remaining funds isn't clear, and Livecoin could not be contacted by press time.

"Our clients have to contact us via email [email protected] to get payments after passing verification procedure. We accept claims for payments for the next 2 months. 17 March 2021 is the last day of accepting your requests, after this date no new requests will be accepted," Livecoin said in the announcement.

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Yogita Khatri is a senior reporter at The Block, covering all things crypto. As one of the earliest team members, Yogita has played a pivotal role in breaking numerous stories, exclusives and scoops. With nearly 3,000 articles under her belt, Yogita holds the records as The Block's most-published and most-read author of all time. Prior to joining The Block, Yogita worked at crypto publication CoinDesk and The Economic Times, where she wrote on personal finance. To contact her, email: [email protected]. For her latest work, follow her on X @Yogita_Khatri5.