The Russian cryptoexchange Livecoin claims it has suffered a „carefully planned attack“, but some in the community suspect it was an exit scam.

Livecoin, a lesser-known Russian crypto-currency exchange, has abruptly stopped its operations after an alleged hacker attack on Christmas Day. According to the Livecoin homepage, the exchange has suffered a „carefully planned attack“ that has caused the platform to lose control of all its servers, backend and nodes.

The exchange urged its customers to stop using its services, including deposits, trading Bitcoin Profit and APIs. „We were not able to stop our service in time. Our news channels were also compromised. At the moment, we partially control the frontend, so we can make this announcement,“ says the Livecoin homepage.

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Livecoin said it is working hard to regain control of its servers, promising to provide a security update „in the next few days“. The exchange also said it is cooperating with „local police authorities“.

The incident reportedly took place on the night of 23-24 December. It appears that hackers have managed to take over the infrastructure of Livecoin and change the prices at the exchange to abnormally high values.

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A co-founder of YellowBlock, a cryptomoney educational website known as „Cryptorangutang“ said Bitcoin (BTC) exceeded $320,000 per coin on the platform on Dec. 24. „Whatever is going on, I don’t recommend trying to earn $ on this, it will most likely clog up the funds,“ he wrote on Twitter.

According to comments from users of Livecoin’s unofficial Telegram group, the exchange is not working at the time of writing, although the exchange has briefly opened a login page. Some Reddit users also suggested that the Livecoin „hack“ could be a classic exit scam.

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Livecoin did not immediately respond to Cointelegraph’s request for comments. It appears that the exchange has no official social networking account on Twitter or Telegram.

At the time of this writing, Livecoin trade volumes are not available on major crypto-money tracking websites such as CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap. As of 24 December, Livecoin was ranked 173rd among cryptoexchanges, with a daily trade volume of around $16 million.