Somebody reportedly took Bithumb, one of Korea’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, for US$13 million in EOS and possibly an additional US$6.2 million in XRP. Officials at the exchange say the stolen crypto belonged to the exchange and that investors’ assets were safe.

Your first thought might be that this was the work of a certain neighboring state with a refreshingly bullish attitude towards crypto.

Bithumb, however, believes this was an inside job. Whether that’s supposed to be reassuring, we do not know. What’s definitely NOT reassuring, however, is that this latest incident comes less than a year after somebody hacked the exchange for US$30 million in crypto.

As reported earlier, only seven of 21 local cryptocurrency exchanges surveyed passed a government security audit, though for what it’s worth, Bithumb was one of the seven that passed. And as the Korean media website Bloter notes, it’s a weird time for exchanges, both local and overseas, with a steady stream of news about hacks, fraud, fake suicides, suspicious auto accidents involving water deer and other unfortunate happenings.

All this is likely to encourage the authorities to take a more proactive approach to cryptocurrency exchanges. And in fact, Korean prosecutors last month put together a special task force to find ways to protect the public from crypto scams in a more systematic way.