‘Coincheck has paid out more than $440 million in compensation’

Coincheck, a major Japanese exchange for cryptocurrencies, has said through a spokesperson that the company has reimbursed more than $440 million to duped customers. Due to a hack, the exchange had lost so-called NEM tokens.

A total of $440 million in compensation has been paid, according to a Coincheck spokesperson, for damages to all 260,000 customers who lost their NEM tokens as a result of the hack, ABS CBN News reported on the basis of an AFP report. The compensation will be paid in Japanese yen, the company reports. Coincheck states that it is deeply sorry and that it has fundamentally overhauled its internal control systems. The exchange has now resumed the distribution and sale of some virtual currencies.

Coincheck says it used its own funds for this compensation. According to the company, this amount compensated all 260,000 customers who lost NEM tokens as a result of the previous hack, in which a total of 523 million NEM tokens were stolen. Coincheck CEO Koichiro Wada previously said that the NEM tokens were not stored in a cold wallet, but in a hot wallet, which was connected to the internet.

The Japanese company announced at the end of January that it would indemnify all 260,000 users. It was then reported by Reuters that not everything would be reimbursed; in total, the compensation would amount to 80 percent of the stolen value, or 344 million euros. That has now turned out to be incorrect, since the full damage has been compensated.