Bitcoin trader Bitfinex, which suspended operations on August 2 after its system was compromised by hackers and millions of user funds stolen, has finally managed to restore the platform and resume trading. After the hacking incident, Bitfinex also stopped all digital token deposits to and withdrawals from its platform.
However, on August 13, the firm announced that the “incident had been resolved” and the website relaunched.
Two days earlier on August 10, Bitfinex had mentioned that it would be enabling additional platform features as its strives to restore full service capabilities.
“Today, August 10th, 2016, at 16:00:00 UTC we will be enabling additional platform features as we continue to restore service after the incident on August 2nd. Exchange trading will be enabled for all currencies and pairs, while deposits and withdrawals will be enabled for BTC, ETC, ETH, and USD – with LTC and Tether to follow shortly thereafter. Exchange trading will also be enabled for the BFX token on pairs BFXUSD and BFXBTC”, announced the firm on its website.
“We are working on tokenizing BFX via the Omni Layer to allow withdrawals for the BFX token, but we are still working out some protocol level details. Please note that U.S. residents will only be able to sell—not buy—BFX tokens at this time. Terms for the BFX token and requirements for token transfers are available on the site. Parameters for assigning Margin Trading will be re-enabled for non-U.S. residents later this week.”
The US-based firm stated that it had in the past week “taken significant steps to ensure that it can restore service in a secure environment,” and added additional platform and infrastructure security checks; regenerated all encrypted services, including wallets, security tokens, and passwords; moved funds to multisig cold storage; re-evaluated all third-party integrations; performed a comprehensive system audit in order to identify vulnerabilities; and rebuilt the entire platform on new infrastructure.
The firm has also invalidated all deposit addresses that were generated before August 9 19:00:00 UTC for all cryptocurrencies except Tether USDT and all deposit addresses now shown on the site or generated by the API are the new addresses. Customers have been urged to use the new deposit addresses when depositing cryptocurrencies.
“We are aware that many questions remain and we intend to discuss the theft, the distribution of losses, and our recovery plan in follow-up announcements. We are trying to be as transparent as we can be while we continue to try to make the best of a terrible situation. We regret the loss that took place, but we continue to remain confident in Bitcoin, the trading community, and our plan to compensate our customers. As always, we remain open to constructive commentary and suggestions from all sides,” noted Bitfinex on its status website.
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