Marko Kobal is out after hackers stole $63 million
Earlier this month, hackers stole $63 million from crypto-currency mining site NiceHash, prompting the company’s founders to apologize on Facebook Live and to shut down operations for 24 hours. Now, the company’s co-founder, Marko Kobal, has stepped down as CEO.
The company allows users to offer up their computer’s processing power to help with the calculations needed to create new bitcoins. In a statement on LinkedIn, Kobal says that the company has been working to recover from the hack, and that he will step aside to “allow new management to lead the organization through its next, exciting period of growth.” He will be replaced by Zdravko Poljašević, according to Slovenian newspaper Delo (via Business Insider). Kobal founded the company along with Matjaž Škorjanc, who will remain the company’s Chief Technology Officer.
NiceHash says that their success in paying out a billion dollars to crypto-currency miners over the last couple of years brought them unwanted attention. The company and security experts found that hackers used an engineers credentials on December 6th to access its payment system, and were able to steal 4,700 bitcoins. The hack came as bitcoin prices were spiking, reaching $19,000 per coin before subsiding.