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| Founded | 2014 |
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| Website | bithumb |
Bithumb is a South Korean cryptocurrency exchange. [1] [2] Founded in 2014, Bithumb Korea has 8 million registered users, 1 million mobile app users, and a current cumulative transaction volume has exceeded USD $1 trillion. [3]
In October 2018, BK Global Consortium signed a deal to buy a majority share of BTC Holding Co. which is Bithumb's largest investor. [4]
On January 22, 2019, OTC-listed holding company Blockchain Industries signed a binding letter of intent to merge with Bithumb on or before March 1, 2019. The plan is to form a new publicly traded entity called the Blockchain Exchange Alliance (BXA) that would ‘up-list’ on either the New York Stock Exchange or NASDAQ and make BXA the first major cryptocurrency exchange to go public. [5]
On April 11, 2019, Bithumb announced a net loss of KRW205.5 billion (US$180 million) in 2018, a sharp turnaround from the KRW427.2 billion profit in 2017, despite 2018's sales rising 17.5% to KRW391.7 million. The company blamed the loss on the sharp decline in the price of cryptocurrencies and reduced trading volume. [6]
In June 2017, hackers stole user information from a Bithumb employee's personal computer. [7]
In January 2018, Bithumb was raided by the government for alleged tax evasion. [8] They were found not guilty, but still had to pay nearly $28 million in back taxes. [9]
In June 2018, approximately $32 million of cryptocurrency was stolen from Bithumb in a hack. [10]
In January 2019, 30 out of 340 total Bithumb employees were laid off in response to declining trading volume and profits in 2018. [11]
On March 29, 2019, Bithumb said that it was hacked. It pointed its fingers at insiders. Nearly $20 million worth of EOS and Ripple tokens were estimated to have been stolen. [12]
On September 2, 2020, Bithumb was reported in local Korean news that the Bithumb exchange was raided by the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency's Intelligent Crime Investigation Unit. According to the report, the search and seizure is related to suspicion of investment fraud. [13]
A cryptocurrency exchange, or a digital currency exchange (DCE), is a business that allows customers to trade cryptocurrencies or digital currencies for other assets, such as conventional fiat money or other digital currencies. Exchanges may accept credit card payments, wire transfers or other forms of payment in exchange for digital currencies or cryptocurrencies. A cryptocurrency exchange can be a market maker that typically takes the bid–ask spreads as a transaction commission for its service or, as a matching platform, simply charges fees.
Bitcoin is the first decentralized cryptocurrency. Nodes in the peer-to-peer bitcoin network verify transactions through cryptography and record them in a public distributed ledger, called a blockchain, without central oversight. Consensus between nodes is achieved using a computationally intensive process based on proof of work, called mining, that requires increasing quantities of electricity and guarantees the security of the bitcoin blockchain.
A cryptocurrency, crypto-currency, or crypto is a digital currency designed to work as a medium of exchange through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank, to uphold or maintain it.
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Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency, a digital asset that uses cryptography to control its creation and management rather than relying on central authorities. Originally designed as a medium of exchange, Bitcoin is now primarily regarded as a store of value. The history of bitcoin started with its invention and implementation by Satoshi Nakamoto, who integrated many existing ideas from the cryptography community. Over the course of bitcoin's history, it has undergone rapid growth to become a significant store of value both on- and offline. From the mid-2010s, some businesses began accepting bitcoin in addition to traditional currencies.
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Cryptocurrency and crime describe notable examples of cybercrime related to theft of cryptocurrencies and some methods or security vulnerabilities commonly exploited. Cryptojacking is a form of cybercrime specific to cryptocurrencies that have been used on websites to hijack a victim's resources and use them for hashing and mining cryptocurrency.
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