The breach was discovered May 7, 2019 at 17:15:24 (UTC), caused by hackers using a variety of techniques, including phishing, viruses and other attacks.

Binance says all the 7,000+ bitcoin was compromised in one transaction, being the only affected transaction. “It impacted our BTC hot wallet only (which contained about 2% of our total BTC holdings). All of our other wallets are secure and unharmed,” the press statement says.

“The hackers had the patience to wait, and execute well-orchestrated actions through multiple seemingly independent accounts at the most opportune time. The transaction is structured in a way that passed our existing security checks. It was unfortunate that we were not able to block this withdrawal before it was executed. Once executed, the withdrawal triggered various alarms in our system. We stopped all withdrawals immediately after that,” the press statement adds.

Binance said after the incident that they will conduct a thorough security review, which will include all parts of their systems and data. The review should take a week, according to Binance’s estimates. During this period, deposits and withdrawals will need to remain suspended. “We beg for your understanding in this difficult situation,” Binance says. Trading remains enabled, though.

“Please also understand that the hackers may still control certain user accounts and may use those to influence prices in the meantime. We will monitor the situation closely. But we believe with withdrawals disabled, there isn’t much incentive for hackers to influence markets. In this difficult time, we strive to maintain transparency and would be appreciative of your support,” the Binance press release says.

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Following the launch, users in the United Kingdom and Thailand can complete KYC verification to become eligible to trade on the platform.

Allowing users to place orders with exchange rates and payment methods pre-selected by themselves to buy or sell Virtual Financial Assets with fiat currencies, OKEx claims users are hence offered access to a low-volatility market and zero transaction fee. Before listing the British pound and the Thai baht, the platform had already been facilitating global digital assets trading with the Vietnamese dong (VND) and Chinese renminbi (CNY) fiat-to-cryptocurrency markets. In the future, the platform expects to add more currencies to its listings. The Thai baht (THB) and British pound (GBP) OTC trading markets currently support bitcoin (BTC), tether (USDT), ether (ETH), and litecoin (LTC).

“Our mission is simple at OKEx. We aim to offer flexibility and convenience to our traders,” says Andy Cheung, Head of Operations at OKEx. “Thailand and the UK own the fastest-growing crypto communities in the world. We see great potential in these two markets and want to support the needs there. Because of the increasing trading volume and the number of traders in these two countries, we decided to launch the new THB and GBP trading services on our OTC trading platform. Wherever the market potential locates, we will expand there. In 2019, you can expect more currencies to be supported on OKEx,” the head adds.

The post OKEx lists pound sterling and baht on trading platform first appeared on The Malta Business Weekly.