Company:Cryptopia

Cryptopia logo

Cryptopia was a New Zealand cryptocurrency exchange based in Christchurch, which was the target of a US$16 million theft in January 2019. The exchange closed about May 15, 2019 and began liquidation.

History

Cryptopia was founded in 2014 by Rob Dawson and Adam Clark. They quit their jobs in 2017 in order to work on the exchange full-time.

In May 2017 Cryptopia launched the New Zealand Dollar Token (NZDT), a cryptocurrency whose value is supposed to be pegged to the New Zealand Dollar.

From May to December 2017 Cryptopia grew from 30,000 to 1,000,000 users. In January 2018, they temporarily suspended new account registrations and trading in their Dogecoin and Litecoin markets, claiming they could not handle the influx of trades.

In January 2018, Cryptopia announced that ASB Bank would be closing their accounts associated with NZDT in February. As a result, Cryptopia stopped accepting deposits into NZDT and told customers to withdraw the associated funds by the closing date. Cryptopia planned to relaunch NZDT in early 2019 after making a deal with a new, smaller bank.

While it was operating, Cryptopia was among the most popular cryptocurrency exchanges for public pump-and-dump activities.

On 15 January 2019 Cryptopia announced that they had "suffered a security breach which resulted in significant losses". A report from Elementus, a New York-based blockchain company, estimated the value of stolen funds to be around $23 million NZD (US$16 million). It also stated that the theft began on 14 January and continued until the 17th. Bankruptcy proceedings for Cryptopia are currently pending in New Zealand courts.