Before Christmas Cryptpoia sent out a blanket email stating that they had been hacked by 100+ alt coins (via a 51 % attack) and were closing those markets.
xtraely and lafu and anyone else claiming to be representatives of Cryptopia definitely aren't because they would have been instructed not to make any statements while a criminal investigation is on going.
Neither Lafu nor myself are employees of Cryptopia. Nor are we authorized to make any statements on their behalf. There is no official representation of Cryptopia on Bitcointalk as they only consider discord and twitter as official media channels.
As a client of the exchange I probably have more $ at risk than most.
You are correct that their staff have instructed not to make any statements. Most are on leave as the offices are considered a crime scene.
The other incidents last year that you mentioned are different.
A 51% attack by definition is a blockchain based attack.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/1/51-attack.asp It means the blockchain has been exploited and fraudulent transactions by a single attacker have caused the genuinely mined transactions to be discarded through chain re-organisation and orphaned. Some reputable devs have re-embused their customers that have been affected by a blockchain 51% attack.
I explained how such an attack works here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5035336.msg46025953#msg46025953In May Bittrex was the victim of a 51% double spend attack on the Bitcoin Gold network. The Bitcoin Gold developers only offered to partially compensate Bittrex for the losses and Bittrex chose to delist Bitcoin Gold instead.
A coin network that allows a 51% attack double spend happen is neither decentralized nor immutable. Both of which are essential for a trustless network.
Many coins have changed from POW to Hybrid, POS or a more complex algo or discontinued because they are unable to prevent attacks on the coin network.