A statement on Bitstamp’s website informs the company’s customers of the loss of 19,000 BTC and temporary suspension of services. Still, there is nothing to worry about, says the company.

A new message on the Bitstamp website, posted at 12:34 a.m. GMT, provides an update on the situation at the major bitcoin exchange. As we wrote earlier, around 5 a.m. GMT on January 5th, the website stopped providing services and posted a message urging customers not to make deposits “to previously issued bitcoin deposit addresses” because “they cannot be honored”.

The new statement, repeating the same request, gives an account of the current situation at Bitstamp. On January 4th, “some of Bitstamp’s operational wallets were compromised, resulting in a loss of less than 19,000 BTC (about $5 million at current prices). The website is temporarily suspended “as an additional security measure” while the incident is being investigated in cooperation with law enforcement officials and the site itself is being transferred “onto a new safe environment”.

The situation will not affect customers beyond the suspension, claims the company, because the lost money is just a small part of Bitstamp’s bitcoin reserves, “the overwhelming majority of which are held in secure offline cold storage systems”. Bitstamp customers are being told that all their balances held prior to January 5th “will be honored in full”.

Nejc Kodrič, the co-founder and CEO of Bitstamp, confirms the information on his Twitter account. He skipped a flight to work on the situation and hopes to be able to tell today when the site will resume its functions.