Vitaliy Bodnar, founder of BTC-Alpha, comments on the pressure and threats

The cybercriminals tried to steal users' money but failed. After a failed attempt, Vitali Bodnar received threats and insinuations of physical violence from unknown people. Bodnar believes that all this (and the attack) is the work of competitors.

"These are the methods of our competitors, with whom we refused to cooperate and add their coins to our platform. They launch their exchange and on the same day there is a massive attack on us. I don't believe in coincidences like that," Vitaly Bodnar said.

The management of BTC-Alpha has contacted Ukrainian law enforcement agencies. As long as the investigation is ongoing, Vitaly Bodnar is holding back on comments about who he suspects attacked his company. However, the Ukrainian developer said he was ready to answer any questions from journalists about the process of restoring the exchange, "but I need to sleep at least a few hours." Over the past week, the BTC-Alpha team has not had time to sleep.

"Nine years of my life have been dedicated to cryptocurrency. I have watched us become the people of the future, and now I I'm in a situation where I have to deal with people with guns from the 90s. The attackers indicated to us through calls and messages that we should not come to BlockchainUA, which was held on November 3, and that they will be there, " Vitaly said.

As a reminder, BTC-Alpha was attacked on November 1, 2021, the day of the company's 5-year anniversary. According to analysts of the exchange, the attack was planned in advance and took more than 6 months to develop. The cybercriminals were unable to find a technical vulnerability in the code, leaving users' funds untouched. The team at BTC-Alpha has been working for 7 days to restore the exchange, which was one of the top 100 crypto exchanges before the attack, according to Coinmarketcap.

"Users' balances are completely safe, we did not lose a single cent, but the hash of users' passwords was compromised. For this reason, access to accounts is temporarily restricted," Bodnar previously commented.