Join our Telegram Channel!Get Bitcoin News stories in Telegram × DismissHONG KONG — The digital currency Bitcoin plunged on Wednesday after Bitfinex, an exchange based in Hong Kong, said it had been hacked and funds stolen.The exchange said it had halted trading, deposits and withdrawals while it investigated which users had been affected.Bitcoin’s trading value fell about 20 percent early on Wednesday, local time in Hong Kong, but had recovered about half the loss by early afternoon.Zane Tackett, Bitfinex’s director of community and product development, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.But he said in a posting on Reddit that 119,756 Bitcoins had been stolen.Before the hacking was made public, that number of Bitcoins would have been worth about $72 million.Now that the currency has slumped, the figure is closer to $65 million.The exchange, one of the world’s largest, said in a blog post that any outstanding settlements would be made at the price before the hacking.

“As we account for individualized customer losses, we may need to settle open margin positions, associated financing, and/or collateral affected by the breach,” Bitfinex said in the post.It added that customers’ losses would be addressed later.using bitcoin anonymouslyOne Bitcoin Is Worth... On , one Bitcoin was worth $.win bitcoin diceThe virtual currency — one that some people believe will transform the global financial system — has remained a mystery to many.bitcoin iphone rageSecurity breaches of this type have raised questions about the viability of Bitcoin.ethereum originThe most notable episode was the collapse in 2014 of Mt.ethereum hiring

Gox, an exchange based in Tokyo, in which hundreds of thousands of Bitcoins were stolen in a heist that experts and law enforcement officials are still trying to unravel.This past June, a hacker stole more than $50 million worth of Ether, another digital currency, from an experimental virtual currency project called the Decentralized Autonomous Organization.litecoin hash rate historyJack Liu, chief strategy officer at OKCoin, a large digital currency exchange, said he was not concerned about the security of his company because it uses a different system.But he noted that there should be more discussion between exchanges over best practices.“We care about the health of the ecosystem,” he said, although he emphasized that nobody should be dictating how Bitcoins are secured.“Hackers are only getting better and so adoption of the same solution may not be the safest for the industry.”Although some view Bitcoin as the future of finance, allowing for faster and cheaper transactions, the Bitcoin community has been rived with infighting over the development of the technology.

The blockchain ledger, part of the coding that underlies the currency, has also gained more mainstream traction, as banks see an opportunity to use the technology to speed up trades.Bitfinex said the theft had been reported to law enforcement.The US Securities and Exchange Commission has denied a request to list what would have been the first US exchange-traded fund built to track Bitcoin, sending the price of the digital currency plunging.Investors Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss have been trying for more than three years to convince the SEC to let them bring the Bitcoin ETF to market.CBOE's Bats exchange had applied to list the ETF.In response to the rejection, the digital currency's price fell as much as 18 percent in trading before rebounding slightly.It last traded down 7.8 percent to US$1098.Bitcoin had scaled to a record of nearly US$1300 this month, higher than the price of an ounce of gold, as investors speculated that an ETF holding the digital currency could woo more people into buying the asset.

Bitcoin is a virtual currency that can be used to move money around the world quickly and with relative anonymity, without the need for a central authority, such as a bank or government.Yet it presents a new set of risks to investors given its limited adoption, a number of massive security breaches affecting bitcoin owners, and the lack of consistent treatment of the assets by governments."Based on the record before it, the commission believes that the significant markets for Bitcoin are unregulated," the SEC said in a statement."The commission notes that Bitcoin is still in the relatively early stages of its development and that, over time, regulated Bitcoin-related markets of significant size may develop."The regulators have questions and concerns about how the funds would work and whether they could be priced and trade effectively, according to a financial industry source familiar with the SEC's thinking."We began this journey almost four years ago, and are determined to see it through," Tyler Winklevoss, CFO of Digital Asset Services, said.

"We agree with the SEC that regulation and oversight are important to the health of any marketplace and the safety of all investors."The Winklevoss twins are best known for their feud with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg over whether he stole the idea for what became the world's most popular social networking website from them.The former Olympic rowers ultimately settled their legal dispute, which was dramatised in the 2010 film The Social Network.Since then they have become major investors in the digital currency, which relies on mining computers that validate blocks of transactions by competing to solve mathematical puzzles.The first to solve the puzzle and clear the transaction is rewarded with new bitcoins.Solutions to the puzzle come roughly every 10 minutes.Advocates of the currency and the technology it relies on to document transactions, blockchain, were dismayed by the ruling."How do we develop well-capitalised and regulated markets in the US and Europe if financial innovators aren't allowed to bring products to market that grow domestic demand for digital currencies like Bitcoin?"