At the end of 2018, South Korea’s largest Bitcoin exchange Bithumb suffered a net loss of 205.5 billion won (about $ 180 million). It is reported by KoreaTimes with reference to the data of the exchange's operator BTCKorea.

For comparison, in 2017, Bithumb announced a profit of 427.2 billion won ($ 375 million)

It is noteworthy that the sales at the site increased by more than 17% compared with 2017, and the company's operating income was 256.1 billion won, which is only 3.4% less than last year.

In addition to objective reasons in the form of a bear market, such depressing figures are also associated with the June burglary , as a result of which about $ 31 million were stolen from Bithumb. Half of the funds of the exchange, however, were quickly recovered .

Recall that at the end of March this year, Bithumb lost 3 million EOS and 20 million XRP as a result of a new hack. Now the company claims that all user assets are on “cold” wallets protected from cyber attacks.

In addition, in March, the exchange reported a serious reduction in staff – Bithumb intends to lay off 50% of its employees. And even though the company states that most of them decided to leave of their own accord, the financial figures released today say that one of the reasons was also serious losses.

Nevertheless, the company does not intend to give up and says that it continues to increase investments in foreign projects.

Note that the prolonged “cryptozyme” has affected many cryptocurrency companies. So, in the third quarter of 2018 alone, the Chinese mining giant Bitmain suffered losses amounting to about $ 500 million.

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