Bitcoin and Ethereum fall after a $31 million crypto heist

Men wearing masks of characters from the Sony video game "Payday: The Heist" at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles in 2011.REUTERS/Danny Moloshok

• Tether, the company behind a cryptocurrency pegged to the US dollar, said $31 million was stolen from its main wallet on Sunday.
• Heist appears to have shaken markets, with bitcoin, Ethereum, and bitcoin cash all falling.

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LONDON — The major cryptocurrencies bitcoin and Ethereum were falling against the dollar on Tuesday morning after a $31 million heist elsewhere in the digital currency world.

Tether, which created a cryptocurrency called USDT that is pegged to the dollar, said in a blog post on Tuesday that "funds were improperly removed from the Tether treasury wallet through malicious action by an external attacker."

The US company said $30,950,010 was taken Sunday.

"As Tether is the issuer of the USDT managed asset, we will not redeem any of the stolen tokens, and we are in the process of attempting token recovery to prevent them from entering the broader ecosystem," Tether said.

Tether is down 0.3% against the dollar on the back of the news, according to CoinMarketCap.com.

The theft appears to have shaken wider confidence in crypto markets. Bitcoin was down almost 1% against the dollar at 7.45 a.m. BST (2.45 a.m. ET):Markets Insider

Ethereum, the second-biggest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, was down by 1.5% against the dollar at the same time:

Markets Insider

Bitcoin cash, the third-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, is down over 5%:Markets Insider

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