Vircurex has chosen to freeze all user accounts as it teeters towards financial ruin caused by cyberattacks. The Beijing-based cryptocurrency trading post, a victim of two cyberattacks last year, began dipping into its own cold wallet to release currency — stored offline — in order to compensate users affected by the security breaches, in which “significant” losses were suffered by the company.
A small bitcoin exchange in Beijing is in trouble again after trying to earn back funds lost in two hacking incidents last year. The exchange, called Vircurex, said in a statement it would freeze on Monday cryptocurrency accounts held by its customers after large withdrawals apparently nearly drained it of funds. A tiny player, Vircurex traded just 54 bitcoins in the last 30 days, according to statistics compiled by Bitcoin Charts. By comparison, the largest China-based exchange, BTC-China, transacted more than 202,000 bitcoins in the same period. But it is the latest exchange to suffer financial problems following the collapse last month of Mt. Gox, the one-time king of the bitcoin trade, which lost an estimated 650,000 bitcoins and US$23 million in cash through poor accounting and security problems.
