Cryptocurrency exchange Bitmart hacked, losing nearly $200 million

Cryptocurrency exchange Bitmart has lost nearly $200 million in a hack of hot wallets hosted on the Ethereum (ETH) and Binance Smart Chain (BSC) blockchains.

The news was first disclosed by blockchain security and data analysis company PeckShield, which discovered a transfer of approximately $100 million through the Ethereum blockchain.

Further investigation by the team revealed that the crypto exchange’s BSC reserves were also hacked at the same time, with losses amounting to $96 million:

“Hackers stole more than 20 tokens, including altcoins such as Binance Coin (BNB), Safemoon, BSC-USD, and BPay. A large number of memecoins such as BabyDoge, Floki, and Moonshot were also hacked.”

In an official Telegram channel, Bitmart representatives initially claimed that the outflows were routine withdrawals, labeling reports of the hack as “fake news.”

However, hours later, Bitmart CEO Sheldon Xia confirmed that it was indeed a hack caused by a "security breach." The team is analyzing the methods that the hacker may have used. The hacker withdrew assets worth about $150 million, and other wallets are currently safe. BitMart has suspended withdrawals until further notice.

Cryptocurrency lending platform Celsius has confirmed that it lost $50 million in an exploit of the decentralized protocol BadgerDAO, in what appears to be an ongoing threat to the crypto ecosystem.

Taking similar precautions as Bitmart, Badger continues to investigate the issue and has paused all smart contracts on the protocol to avoid any further losses.

PeckShield posted on Twitter that approximately $200 million was stolen from BitMart’s hot wallet, of which $100 million was lost from Ethereum and $96 million was lost from Binance Chain.

Author: Amy Liu

Image source: Twitter