Local South Korean authorities have successfully recovered 1,360 ethereum (worth around $3.4 million at current prices) that were stolen from a crypto exchange by hackers back in 2018.
It can be recalled that in mid-2018, an unnamed domestic crypto exchange fell victim to hacker exploits and lost around $45 million. According to local media outlets, the hackers will able to make off with 11 different kinds of tokens including ethereum and bitcoin.
Despite the unknown whereabouts of the stolen digital assets, the South Korean police have been relentless in their pursuit operations and three years later, they were able to recover part of what was taken from the crypto business.
Victims reunite with their coins, and then some
The trading platform’s customers who owned the ethereum funds are set to reunite with their coins. But that is not the only thing that’s about to happen.
As it turns out, their assets have appreciated in value and are worth more than their value back at the time when the incident happened.
In mid-2018, ethereum was only worth around $450 per unit. At press time, according to CoinGecko data, the cryptocurrency is changing hands at more than $2,400.
Funds remain on the move
Investigations conducted by the authorities revealed the hackers moved the illegally gained digital currencies from wallet to wallet on several occasions to disrupt the efforts of the police to trace them.
The funds were recently traced to be held on a Latin American exchange, but the police refrained from revealing its name, or that of the crypto exchange that was the victim of the hack.
They did, however, said the perpetrators exerted effort to move the assets onto exchanges in several countries in an attempt to make it harder for authorities to find and recover them.
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