Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck last week suffered a major hack in which it lost around $500 million in NEM tokens, according to reports.

In an official blog post, Coincheck said, “NEM held by our company was illegally remitted outside,” adding that it has begun investigating the matter. Soon after, the company suspended all withdrawals, froze trading in all tokens except Bitcoin, and halted deposits into NEM tokens.

“We know where the funds were sent,” Coincheck co-founder Yusuke Otsuka said (As quoted by Bloomberg. “We are tracing them and if we’re able to continue tracking, it may be possible to recover them. But it is something we are investigating at the moment."

"It's worth 58bn yen based on the calculation at the rate when detected," he said (as quoted by BBC).

In a blog post, dated January 28, Coincheck has announced its intention to compensate the customers who have lost their funds in the latest hack. The company said that it has lost 523 million XEM (NEM’s token) which has affected around 260,000 token holders.

“All affected users will be repaid in JPY via Coincheck Wallet,” Coincheck said. “We realize that this illicit transfer of funds from our platform and the resulting suspension in services has caused immense distress to our customers, other exchanges, and people throughout the cryptocurrency industry, and we would like to offer our deepest and humblest apologies to all of those involved. In moving towards reopening our services, we are putting all of our efforts towards discovering the cause of the illicit transfer and overhauling and strengthening our security measures while simultaneously continuing in our efforts to register with the Financial Services Agency as a Virtual Currency Exchange Service Provider.”