Livecoin Exchange Announces Shutdown

On January 16, representatives of the cryptocurrency exchange Livecoin, which was hacked in late December 2020, announced their decision to shut down the project and pay out the remaining funds.

Please read update on https://t.co/sqj62mmC3H

— livecoin (@livecoin_net) January 16, 2021

“Our service sustained significant technical and financial damage. Restoring operations is not feasible,” the statement said.

For refunds, clients are asked to send to the address verification@livecoin.news their login and the date of registration on the exchange. After this they will receive further instructions for verification.

“Applications are accepted only from the email address with which you registered an account on our service, and only in English or Russian,” the statement said.

Applications for payouts will be collected until 17 March 2021. After that date, new applications will not be accepted.

“We extend our deepest apologies for the situation, and ask you to remain calm when communicating with our staff, since our service sustained serious financial losses due to the attackers’ fault, as did our clients. In the case of threats or insults to support staff – the submission may be rejected,” Livecoin added.

The exchange’s representatives also warned about fake groups in various messaging apps and services that may pose as Livecoin or hackers. They emphasised that they publish official information only on Livecoin.news.

“Do not send any money to anyone for any reason. You do not need to pay anything to obtain a refund from us; you only need to submit an application and follow the instructions provided.”

The exchange continues the investigation into the incident and hunt the attackers.

Twitter users reacted warily to this message and urged clients not to rush sending personal data:

TO EVERYONE, THINK TEN TIMES BEFORE SENDING ANY DOCUMENT TO THESE UNKNOWN PEOPLE, THIS ACCOUNT IS STILL REGISTERED UNDER THE HACKED DOMAIN, THEY WILL SELL YOUR IDENTITY, OR DO WORSE THINGS。

— jiegen (@jiegen) January 17, 2021

“Think ten times before sending any documents to these unknown people. The exchange’s Twitter account is registered on a hacked domain. They may sell your personal data or worse.”

Also users reported that the email address listed in the Livecoin message is unavailable.

Some users have already submitted requests for refunds. In response from them, the following documents were requested:

• details of the first deposit;
• a scanned passport showing the registered address;
• a scan of a document with the address of residence;
• a selfie with the passport and a sheet of paper bearing the date of registration on the exchange;
• the device model most often used to log in to the exchange;
• source of funds;
• a video file demonstrating the ID of the first-deposit transaction, showing your face and passport, and verbally stating your full name, the date, and confirming the legality of the source of funds.

In turn, clients demand an official video address from the administration detailing the chronology and causes of the hack, explanations for the cessation of the platform’s legal status and data on trading volumes.

Friends, unite, and send this message to them!

Response to verification requirements in Livecoin:
Response to verification requirements in Livecoin:https://t.co/6v3ba5apqg

— Al Ham (@Al_Hamxxx) January 17, 2021

Livecoin has been operating since April 2015. According to available information, until 2018 the exchange was registered to the company DELTA E-COMMERCE LTD. In the UK Companies House register the director of the company was Said Yusipov.

On 4 July 2019 Livecoin re-registered to RED Velvet Investments LTD of Belize. At present the registration period of the latter has expired.

The owners of Livecoin are unknown. Online, names of the executive director Svetlana Geller and the CEO Ivona Zlatova have circulated. No details about these people are known; they may be fictitious.

In December the bitcoin price on Livecoin surged to hundreds of thousands of dollars, and withdrawals from the platform became unavailable.

At that time, director Svetlana Geller deleted her Telegram account. Users suggested that the platform’s founders exit scam.

Soon a message appeared on the homepage saying that the exchange had been subjected to a “carefully planned attack,” and that the administration had completely lost control over the servers, backend and nodes.

Unknown attackers stole 106 BTC, 380 ETH, 236 BCH, 567,012 XRP, 66.8 million DOGE, 56,000 USDT, and an unnamed amount in ERC-20 tokens. All XRP tokens stolen ended up on the KuCoin exchange .

Later unknowns left a message on the site of the recently hacked Livecoin with a bitcoin ransom demand. That message has now been supplemented with the phrase: “Oops! Time’s up, Livecoin…”.

On 3 January, representatives of Livecoin announced about moving to a temporary domain Livecoin.news and noted that they had managed to partially restore access to media channels.

In the Livecoin Telegram chat, the owner of the CRAD token said that the attackers hurriedly withdrew 500,000 tokens and attempted to sell them on p2p. Their actions were intercepted, accounts frozen. A CRAD representative believes that these traces will help in the investigation.

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