Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies fall after Binance coin hacking
The cryptocurrency market falls on Friday and Bitcoin loses the $20,000 mark once more, following news of an alleged computer attack on the Binance coin (BNB) blockchain. The 'hack' reportedly resulted in the theft of $600 million in Binance tokens and forced the 'blockchain' BNB Chain to tweet a warning about "irregular activity." BNB, one of the largest market cap 'altcoins', loses about 4% in 24 hours, most tokens are in the red and total capitalization is back towards $955 billion.
According to several media reports, 2 million BNB were stolen with an approximate value of $566 million. Of that amount, about $7 million has already been frozen, but the attacker is beginning to move the funds off the Binance blockchain onto Ethereum, Fantom and Arbitrum blockchains. Via an update on Twitter, BNB Chain estimates the theft at between $70 million and $80 million.
The warning posted by BNB Chain noted, "Due to irregular activity we are temporarily pausing BSC. We apologize for the inconvenience and will provide further updates here. Thank you for your patience and understanding."
This news, coupled with the second session of declines on Wall Street and the anticipation around the release of the US jobs data, led to a pullback in Bitcoin, as it failed to break above the $20,500 resistance in the previous day's trading. "If the non-farm payrolls data is an echo of the US ADP employment data, it will give more confidence to the US Federal Reserve (Fed) to take a more aggressive approach with monetary policy to control inflation. This scenario may not be healthy for Bitcoin´s price, as it has a close correlation with the Fed's monetary policy," commented Naeem Aslam, an analyst at Avatrade.
In this context, the digital currency par excellence has fallen below the support level, now resistance, located at $20,100 and is battling again with $20,000. The next support is at $19,750. However, the main support is near $19,500, below which the price could start a steady decline.
As for Ethereum, it is holding around $1,350, where the token has been consolidating for several days.