Update – Cryptopia Hackers Sent Money To Binance, Police Investigation Begins

Official Investigations into the hack of New Zealand based cryptocurrency exchange, Cryptopia has started according to a note published by the NZ Police Force today. The authorities still cannot say for sure, the amount of cryptocurrency stolen by hackers but can only confirm that it is a “significant amount.”

The police statement also acknowledged that the primary focus of their current efforts includes commencing both a forensic digital investigation of the company and a physical scene examination at the building.

Hopefully, the NZ Police will try to “identify and, if possible, recover missing funds for Cryptopia customers.”

A later part of the notice read,

We are also aware of speculation in the online community about what might have occurred.  It is too early for us to draw any conclusions and Police will keep an open mind on all possibilities while we gather the information we need.

The authorities also did not place a timeline on when investigations will end but wrote instead

We are dealing with a complex situation and we are unable to put a timeframe on how long the investigation may take.

Binance Freezes Stolen Cryptopia Funds

Just after the police update was published, Ethereum network data revealed that the hackers transferred 31320 METAL (MLT) Tokens, ETH (approximately $7600) to a Binance wallet.

Just checked, we were able to freeze some of the funds. I don’t understand why the hackers keep sending to Binance. Social media will be pretty fast to report it, and we will freeze it. It’s a high risk maneuver for them. https://t.co/i0PeahLzic

— CZ Binance (@cz_binance) January 16, 2019

Binance CEO, Chapeng Zhao confirmed the coin’s movement in a Twitter update and said: “we were able to freeze some of the funds.”

Meanwhile, further investigations by our team at press time showed that the receiving Binance wallet is still active with a balance of over 203,81 MTL (approximately $7,600).

How the latest development will affect police investigations is a question time will answer, but what we’ve realized so far is that the crypto community is together in the fight to help Cryptopia recover from the ugly incident.