Cryptocurrency prices declined on Friday after one of Japan's leading Bitcoin exchanges announced that it was halting client withdrawals.
The Tokyo-based Coincheck said on Twitter that it is halting withdrawals of all coins except Bitcoin and has stopped accepting deposits into NEM coins. The exchange did not specify a reason behind the sudden move.
The exchange was started in 2012, and claims to be the number 1 in Bitcoin trade volume in Japan, based on jpbitcoin.com data.
On Twitter, Koji Higashi, a cryptomarket expert, cited an unconfirmed rumor that Coincheck lost nearly $600 million worth of XEM, the symbol for NEM coin, in a hack.
Another rumor that has fast spread on social media is that the exchange had a Ripple payment of nearly $123 million leaving its wallet on Friday.
If both rumors are proven true, the latest hack would be bigger than the one in 2014, when over $450 million worth of Bitcoins were stolen from the Shibuya, Tokyo-based Mt. Gox, which at the time was the world's biggest bitcoin exchange. The hack led to the collapse of Mt. Gox.
Lon Wong, who is the president of the Singapore-based NEM.io Foundation, said on Twitter that "It's unfortunate that coincheck got hacked. But we are doing everything we can to help."
And Coincheck is not registered with Japan's Financial Services Authority, reports said.
Later on Friday, Coincheck suspended credit card, Pay Easy and convenience store payments.
As of 5.17 am ET, Bitcoin was down 7.04 percent at $10,590, Ripple was lower by 12.69 percent at $1.18, and NEM with a 10th ranking slumped 16.58 percent to trade at $0.802567, on CoinMarketCap.
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