The stolen New Economy Movement (NEM) coins are unlikely to be recovered, according to Li Shigeng, CEO of NEM China. He explained in an interview with 36Kr that due to the anonymity of blockchain, tracking individuals through digital currency addresses is difficult to achieve.摘要：1月26日晚间，日本最大的加密货币交易所之一Coincheck召开新闻发布会称，由于遭遇黑客攻击，平台全部（526亿）新经币（XEM）被非法转移，丢失的新经币价值约523亿美金。新经币（XEM，区块链网络为NEM，全称NewEconomyMovement）是一种点对点的虚拟货币，总市值在全球虚拟货币中排名居前十位。...
On the evening of January 26th, Coincheck, one of Japan's largest cryptocurrency exchanges, held a press conference and announced that all 526 million NEM coins were illegally transferred, resulting in a loss of approximately $523 million. This incident is the largest cryptocurrency theft in history. The NEM.io Foundation confirmed that the theft occurred around 11 pm on January 25th.
New Economy Movement (NEM) is a peer-to-peer virtual currency with a total market value that ranks within the top ten globally.
According to the latest announcement from the NEM blockchain community, some amounts less than $100 have been transferred to several accounts, but have not been transferred to any exchanges.
Li Shigeng mentioned in the 36Kr interview that the stolen funds have been marked by the NEM blockchain team, and cooperation has been established with major exchanges to implement interception functions. This means that when the stolen coins attempt to be traded on exchanges, they will be rejected by the exchange systems. However, there is still a risk in over-the-counter transactions, as the buyers may not be aware of the marker on the coins, and hackers could potentially sell the stolen coins to uninformed traders.
Li Shigeng emphasized that the stolen coins cannot be circulated on exchanges, but there is still a risk in over-the-counter transactions, and efforts will be made to track the hackers.
Japan holds the largest cryptocurrency market globally. The last major theft incident was in 2014 when the Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox filed for bankruptcy due to a hacker attack.
Despite the low likelihood of recovering the stolen NEM coins, Coincheck has committed to fully compensate the 260,000 affected customers at 88.549 Japanese yen (approximately 5.14 RMB) per NEM coin, based on the weighted average price of NEM to the yen on the Zaif exchange during the period when CoinCheck stopped NEM trading until the announcement.
The NEM.io Foundation will collaborate with COINCHECK to track and mark the hacked wallets and their related accounts, as well as identify and report suspicious wallets receiving stolen funds. The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department has already begun investigating the case, and the Financial Services Agency in Japan is also expanding its investigation to prevent future similar incidents. The theft caused a 20% drop in NEM coin prices on January 26th and a 10% decrease in Bitcoin prices.
After the announcement in the NEM community on January 28th, the NEM coin price quickly rebounded, but then continued to decline. In the past 24 hours, the price of NEM has increased by more than 20%, reaching 4.87 RMB at the time of writing.
