Breaking news: Ethereum Classic (ETC) suffers a 51% attack as immutability is disrupted

One of the leading cryptocurrencies in the market is said to have suffered a 51% hack that gave the perpetrators a chance to carry out eleven extreme chain reshuffles as well as a double-spend of at least 88,500 ETC. The double-spend was roughly $400,000 leading to a crash in ETC value. Moreover, platforms and services using Ethereum classic have been stopped in response to the attack.

The attack is said to have commenced on January 5 where block 7245623 was disrupted and reorganized. In the following days, the rate of attacks went up significantly leading to the virtual asset’s violation of its immutability feature.

Exchange platforms such as Coinbase, Kraken, and Poloniex have detected that attack and moved to stop services related to ETC. For instance, Coinbase technical team spotted 11 different chain restructuring. Among them, 9 were double-spends as per the firm’s estimations.

At the time of writing, Ethereum Classic is trading at $4.93 following a 7.92% drop in the last 24 hours. It has a 24-hour exchange volume of $149 million and a market cap of $529 million as per the data on CoinMarketCap.