The virtual currency Bitcoin will “bounce back” after a hack attack caused its value to collapse, according to one of its senior developers.
Gavin Andresen said he hoped the crisis would lead to better security on sites where Bitcoins are bought and sold.
Prices on the main exchange, Mt.Gox, fell from $17.50 (£10.80) to almost zero when a large number of stolen Bitcoins were dumped on the market.
Trading was suspended and eventually rolled back to pre-crash rates.
Mt.Gox revealed details of the security breach on June 20 with an announcement on its website.
“It appears that someone who performs audits on our system and had read-only access to our database had their computer compromised. This allowed for someone to pull our database,” the statement read.
Around the same time, an unidentified person accessed one of the compromised accounts and sold all of its Bitcoins.
They then attempted to buy the coins again and withdraw them in US dollars.
The fraudster was partially foiled when they hit Mt.Gox’s $1000 daily limit.
The decision to reset the Bitcoin rate to a point just before the malicious trades were placed was criticised by some users who had taken the opportunity to buy low.
“Why should everyone who profited from the crash suffer your inability to secure the site?” wrote a user called Elments.
Questionable future
Although the problem was caused by security failings at Mt.Gox, it has raised wider questions about the viability of Bitcoin as a virtual currency.
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