Dutch bitcoin broker Bitonic hacked, funds stolen

Dutch bitcoin broker Bitonic suffered a hack on Sunday night, resulting in the theft of "small amounts" of cryptocurrency from customers, according to emails shared by broadcaster NOS. The attack prompted all customers to be logged out of their accounts as a precautionary measure. Bitonic claims the security flaw leading to the hack has since been remedied.

Three customers did incur losses, but the company promptly compensated them. There is a possibility that other customer data might have been accessed during the breach, although this has not been confirmed yet. The crypto funds stored offline on hard drive wallets, known as "cold storage," remained untouched by the incident. Bitonic has instituted heightened monitoring of all online transactions to prevent any potential further breaches, which may result in a slowdown of trades.

This hack adds to the growing challenges facing the Dutch cryptocurrency market following the court declaring Knaken, a Netherlands-based crypto platform, bankrupt in July due to the disappearance of €7 million in customer funds.