Pipeline Hacking Ransom Recovery Success Acts as Negative Factor
Bitcoin Price Plummets, Recovery Amount Only Half
[Asia Economy New York=Correspondent Baek Jong-min] News that the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) succeeded in recovering bitcoins paid as ransom to hackers has caused cryptocurrencies to collectively turn bearish.
According to CoinMarketCap on the 7th (local time), the price of Bitcoin is trading at around $34,300, down 4.3% compared to 24 hours ago.
Ethereum, ranked second by market capitalization, fell 1.4% and is trading around $2,650.
Dogecoin dropped by as much as 7%, with its price forming around 34 cents.
On this day, Bitcoin's decline deepened after the U.S. Department of Justice announced that it had recovered the ransom paid to hackers who launched a ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline.
U.S. media outlets unanimously reported that this is the first time cryptocurrency paid as ransom has been recovered.
Colonial paid hackers a ransom of $4.4 million in cryptocurrency. The amount of Bitcoin paid by Colonial was 75 coins, and 63.7 coins were reportedly recovered this time. At the current market price, the recovered amount is $2.3 million.
At the time the ransom was paid, the price of Bitcoin was around $50,000, but since then, the price has plummeted, reducing the recovered amount to about half.
© The Asia Business Daily(www.asiae.co.kr). All rights reserved.
