AscendEX Crypto Exchange Hacked for $77 mln

e_abrams

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Dec 11, 2020
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AscendEX, the Singapore- based Crypto Exchange formerly known as BitMax, admitted a hacker attack on one of its hot wallets, which resulted in the theft of some 77 million USD.

Assets not affected by the attack have been transferred to cold wallets while the investigation is carried out, the exchange said in a statement, assuring full compensation to all who have been affected by the breach.

AscendEX said on Twitter that it had identified a number of unauthorized transactions from one of its hot wallets on December 11th.

PeckShield, a block chain research company, estimates that the stolen funds amount to roughly 77 million USD across three block chains, the most heavily affected one being Ethereum with a loss of over 60 million USD worth of crypto coins. The other affected block chains – Binance Smart Chain and Polygon suffered losses of 9,2 million USD and 8,5 million USD respectively.

The largest amount of stolen funds, well over 10,8 million USD, were withdrawn in the not so popular Tara coins, while USDT and USDC, two major stable coins, accounted for 10,7 million USD combined. AscendEX shared the wallet addresses to which the stolen funds were transferred.

AscendEX is servicing more than one million institutional and retail clients all over the world and is currently reporting over 200 million USD in average daily trading volume.

In November AscendEX raised 50 million USD from venture capital funds including Polychain Capital and Hack VC.

AscendEX, which started as BitMax in July 2018, offers crypto exchange, custody and staking services.

In August a hacker behind one of the largest crypto thefts, which costed Poly Network users more than 600 million USD, sadi it has all been done “for fun”, after returning about half of the funds.
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This, I think - the lack of security that is - is one of the biggest problems in the crypto industry.
 

e_abrams

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I am so glad you didn't lose any money! What happened with those who did get their money stolen? Did they get compensated as promised?