In Japan, courtesy is a virtue, trains run on time, and people care about the smallest details.
Which makes this even more of a mystery: how did $62 million worth of cryptocurrency vanish from a cryptocurrency exchange in a two-hour window?
The company that runs the Zaif cryptocurrency trading site posted on its blog this week that it noticed server problems on September 17 and that's when it detected the crypto theft.
But how did this happen?
Reuters has done some nice work on this story, and we'll let them take it from here:
Japanese cryptocurrency firm Tech Bureau Corp has failed to provide adequate details on how thieves hacked into its exchange to steal $62 million or explained its delay in reporting the hack, the country's financial regulator said on Tuesday.
"We have not received enough explanation on what exactly happened. What they told us is an employee's PC was hacked," a senior official at Financial Services Agency told reporters at a briefing.
So far, regulators say they have not seen any proof of that explanation and they claim the company delayed notifying them about the hack.
Japan has been making worldwide headlines about cryptocurrency thefts, and some have been much larger than this one. During January 2018, a different Japanese exchange had $530 million in cryptocurrency hacked.
