Bitcoin Exchange Unocoin to Repay Users After Account Thefts

Users of Unocoin reported that their funds had been stolen over the weekend, prompting the India-based bitcoin exchange to temporarily close and begin issuing reimbursements.

The scope of the thefts – constituting transactions of 0.25 BTC (about $840 at current prices) from an undisclosed number of accounts – is not yet immediately known. The startup – which operates both an exchange service as well as a hosted wallet – indicated in a blog post published earlier today that the incident only a small subset of its customers base.

That said, Unocoin accepted the blame for the thefts and said that it would refund the affected users.

The startup explained:

"Due to our security protocol, just after a few transactions our server identified the pattern and stopped the subsequent transactions by marking it as pending. We are now working on cancelling the pending transactions to users. Unocoin has taken the responsibility to refund the few transactions that happened to get processed."

Unocoin suspended logins in light of the incident, though signs on social media indicate that access is being returned to at least some users. In the past couple of hours, several customers have reported on Twitter that their funds had already been given back to them.

The ability to send transactions has also been suspended, which the exchange said would be brought back online pending further security checks.

"The Send feature will be enabled once our security experts feel that it is perfectly safe to do so."

The exchange has raised nearly than $2 million in venture capital to date, including a $1.5 million funding round announced last September.

Disclosure: CoinDesk is a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which has an ownership stake in Unocoin.

Wallet theft image via Shutterstock