Crypto mining platform NiceHash is back online after hackers stole about $60 million worth of bitcoin earlier this month.
Following the theft, the NiceHash team has been working tirelessly towards bringing the platform back to service in a secure and controlled manner. The company has finalized the accounting of losses incurred and are currently coordinating strategic plans for compensating customers.
As of the latest announcement, the Slovenian site’s services, which match those with spare computing power to miners wanting to generate fresh cryptocurrenies, have been resumed. However, NiceHash intends to come online with limited platform functionality as it will likely take some time for the service to resume to pre-hack capacity.
Additional announcements will be made as the startup progressively enables more platform features and return to full operations. It added that every resource is being leveraged to make that happen soon, but it needs to be done in a way in which all assets are secure and immune from vulnerabilities.
NiceHash disclosed in earlier announcements that it’s looking to reimburse users for the entire $60 million of cryptocurrency that was lost. It has started emailing all affected parties, and the messages are slowly arriving ـــ but again it confirmed the stolen balances will be paid back to its owners to the last penny by next month.
Miners have to keep mining if they want their bitcoins back
Andrej Skraba, CMO at NiceHash, further explained:
We are happy to announce we have been able to reserve the funds required to restore balances from a group of international investors. Old balances will therefore be restored by January 31, 2018. We need this interim period to ensure all legal paperwork is processed correctly, so please be patient while we do this.
Please be aware that when we resume the service, it will be apparent that your wallet has 0 value as a result of the hack, although you will also see your old balance on the new dashboard.
It will be interesting to see if the service provided by Nicehash, renting and buying hashrate at the users’ desire, will find traction again. But the lack of better alternatives may not leave buyers and sellers of hashing power a lot of choice, as evident on all the social media platforms.
NiceHash had almost 4,736.42 BTC bitcoins stolen by hackers on December 6, the latest incident to highlight risks that uneven oversight and security pose to booming cryptocurrencies. Hackers have carried out a heist on the platform that describes itself as the largest marketplace for mining digital currencies, making off with bitcoins worth more than $64 million.
Though the team didn’t disclose many details about the attack on its payment system, NiceHash advised users to change online passwords after it halted operations.
