Japanese Exchange Zaif Reopens, MONA Price Doubles
The market operator saw a significant heist targeting Monacoin (MONA) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH).
Zaif, the Japanese market operator hacked last fall, will reopen this Tuesday, Japanese media and traders pointed out. The market operator is also preparing compensation for those who lost funds, to cover the stolen Monacoin (MONA), Bitcoin (BTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH). Part of the compensations will be paid in Japanese yen.
https://twitter.com/NTL_NEMO/status/1119457062788845568
Zaif saw a hack worth about $60 million, and became one of the most affected Japanese exchanges, along with Coincheck, which suffered much deeper losses.
The news of the return for Zaif reignited the markets for MONA. The asset had seen most of its activity frozen for months, and now the price almost doubled overnight. MONA rose from lows around $0.64 up to $1.32 before retreating slightly. The reopening of the Zaif market means more support for MONA trading and potentially a higher valuation.
The Zaif hack proved extremely complicated, and in the end led to the sale of the exchange company to fintech group Fisco, as Cryptovest reported previously. In the months after the hack, some of the stolen funds were tracked to European addresses, as the hackers attempted to liquidate their haul.
MONA is a unique asset, for having more than 87% of its volumes denominated against the Japanese yen. For this reason, MONA is seeing a very different price setting mechanism, show data from CryptoCompare. MONA is active on Bittrex, UpBit, and Bitbank exchanges, still expecting the effect of the renewed Zaif activity.
https://twitter.com/oliver_90210/status/1119883661111889922
MONA is an asset uniquely popular in Japan, with local usage and speculative trading. The MONA/BTC pair is pumping on Bittrex, but Bitbank sees an important MONA/JPY market that is leading the prices. Smaller exchanges still have an anomalously low MONA price.
The news of Zaif’s reopening arrives just days after the closing of the Korean exchange CoinNest, as well as the earlier closings of Coinbit and Zeniex. Market operators remain the most fragile element in the crypto ecosystem. Japanese and Korean exchanges are also important for supporting active fiat-to-crypto markets, with a prevalence of retail investors.