Cryptopia Turns to a U.S. Court for Account Holder Data Protection

In the latest development over its security breach, cryptocurrency exchange Cryptopia has filed for bankruptcy protection in the U.S.

The New Zealand-based exchange, which has been dealing with the fallout of a January 2019 hack, went into liquidation and stopped all trading earlier this month. Cryptopia’s assigned liquidator, Grant Thornton, then petitioned the Southern District of New York’s bankruptcy court to seek recognition of this liquidation and protect exchange data stored on servers by a firm in Arizona.

Per a report from Bloomberg, the unnamed firm had terminated its agreement with Cryptopia and was seeking $2 million in compensation for its services. Cryptopia’s liquidators secured the bankruptcy order from the Southern District of New York, ensuring that the firm’s data are intact through a provisional relief that will last until June 7, 2019.

“The interim order preserves the Cryptopia data, which includes a SQL database containing all account holders’ individual holdings of cryptocurrencies and the account holder contact details,” the update from Grant Thorton reads. “Without this information, reconciling individual holdings with the currencies held by Cryptopia will be impossible.”

This development closely follows news that Cryptopia’s founder has launched a new exchange.