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From the Bitfinex.com homepage:
Investigating - Today we discovered a security breach that requires us to halt all trading on Bitfinex, as well as halt all digital token deposits to and withdrawals from Bitfinex.
We are investigating the breach to determine what happened, but we know that some of our users have had their bitcoins stolen. We are undertaking a review to determine which users have been affected by the breach. While we conduct this initial investigation and secure our environment, bitfinex.com will be taken down and the maintenance page will be left up.
The theft is being reported to—and we are co-operating with—law enforcement.
As we account for individualized customer losses, we may need to settle open margin positions, associated financing, and/or collateral affected by the breach. Any settlements will be at the current market prices as of 18:00 UTC. We are taking this necessary accounting step to normalize account balances with the objective of resuming operations. We will look at various options to address customer losses later in the investigation. While we are halting all operations at this time, we can confirm that the breach was limited to bitcoin wallets; the other digital tokens traded on Bitfinex are unaffected.
The amount was posted in a reddit thread here: I can confirm that the loss from the hack stands at 119,756btc.
According to coindesk.com:
The price of bitcoin fell sharply today exacerbating an already ongoing decline as global market participants reacted to news that one of the largest digital currency exchanges had been hacked.
Earlier this afternoon, Hong Kong-based exchange Bitfinex halted trading after discovering a security breach, which included taking its website offline and pausing all withdrawals and deposits. Representatives from the exchange told CoinDesk engineers were seeking to uncover issues at press time, though the company had confirmed roughly 120,000 BTC (more than $60m) was lost or stolenvia social media.
In response, bitcoin prices fell to $560.16 by 19:30 UTC, $530 by 23:30 and $480 at press time, CoinDesk USD Bitcoin Price Index (BPI) data reveals.
This price was roughly 20% lower than the day's opening of $607.37 and 27% below the high of $658.28 reached on Saturday, 30th July, when the digital currency began pushing lower.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 03 2016, @06:48AM
money in the bank IS safer. With inflation and stuff, it may be worse than keeping gold coins in your basement, but that's a different issue.
if you had 10 gold coins, and you had a choice between storing them in your house or in a bank, the bank would be much harder for thieves to get into.
also, with banks today you can generally play with your accounts on the internet, and move money from a checking/prepaid credit card account to a savings account which is orders of magnitude safer (since it does not have a card attached to it), so it's very convenient.
and with banks there are definitely laws about a certain amount of money being insured, so if the bank is broken into (like this exchange, I guess stealing of online credentials would fall under "broken into" as well), then you are sure that you will get your money back (I think anything under 10^5 you get back, or something like that, and most people have less).
(Score: 2) by ledow on Wednesday August 03 2016, @07:46AM
Most bitcoin exchanges that went under never had enough to cover all their deposits. Certainly not enough to then continue in business.
They are not necessarily classed as banks because Bitcoin isn't necessarily classed as currency. To the eyes of most country's laws, it's no different to a supplier that was going to send you goods who then gets robbed. If they are uninsured they can even go bankrupt, and you will see nothing of your goods, even through the courts.
Agreed on the safety / security thing, though. Most people's PC's holding Bitcoin are no more secure than the cash wedged in the suitcase under the bed in the spare room. So they decide to give it to an exchange/bank to hold onto it for them. It's probably "safer" for most people. But if you're, say, a security freak that's the equivalent of holding the cash in your own nuclear bunker anyway - at that point giving it to an exchange would be idiotic (they aren't going to be more secure than you and it's not like you'll earn more interest!).
Most people who do Bitcoin seriously have offline wallets, and encrypted passphrases on their wallet to authorise transactions (so even stealing the actual wallet files themselves isn't enough). But you can still get compromised.