Altsbit, a cryptocurrency exchange operating in the Italian market, fell victim of a hacker attack. All funds, including those of customers, were stolen. Another exit scam is suspected.

Italian Altsbit tweeted that it was hacked on 6 February.

“Dear users. Unfortunately we have to notify you with the fact that  our exchange was hacked during the night and almost all funds from BTC, ETH, ARRR and VRSC were stolen. A small part of the funds remains safe on cold wallets.”

The number of stolen bitcoins and ETH has yet to be calculated. The average daily trading volume on Altbits was $14.8 million, 98% of which accounted for the BTC/ARRR pair (ARRR is a native token of the Pirate Chain blockchain platform).

According to preliminary user estimates, hackers stole 1,066 Komodo coins and 283,375 Verus coins with a total value of about $27,000.

In comments to crypto-exchange tweets, users expressed outrage that the trading platform neglected the basics of security and kept users' funds on hot wallets. Other commentators noted that centralized crypto exchanges will always be more prone to hacker attacks due to their architecture and that decentralized crypto exchanges solve this problem.

It was also suggested that there was no hacker attack, and Altbits was another exit scam project, whose founders decided to flee with users' money.

In 2018, the Italian cryptocurrency exchange Bitgrail reported the theft of 170 million in cryptocurrency. At the beginning of 2019, the Italian court declared BitGrail bankrupt, and its CEO Francesco Firano was obliged to compensate customers the maximum possible amount of those lost due to the vulnerability.