BitMart Loses $196M to Security Breach
The crypto market recently witnessed a shocking incident as the well-known exchange, BitMart lost 196 million dollars to a security breach. A report by Coindesk stated that the crypto exchange lost $196m, which was originally said to be 150 million dollars.
According to the report, the intruder breached Binance and Ethereum wallets on the exchange. It started with numerous transfers starting around 2:30 pm on 4th December. Two hours later, a string of token transfers, including USDC and Shiba, flooded the exchange.
As soon as the news got out, traders looked for a comprehensive BitMart review to assess its operations. Sheldon Xia, the Founder of BitMart, talked about the recent breach.
Sheldon was confident while stating that only a small fraction of BitMart’s assets were exposed to any risk. Nonetheless, the platform has restricted withdrawals until further notice. The party behind the breach has not been identified.
The stolen finances are already transferred to an Ethreum mixing service, making them hard to trace. This is not common among crypto thieves, as seen with the Poly Network attacker. The individual offered to surrender and returned all the loot, stating they were adding to Poly’s security. Needless to say that it could very well have been a feeble attempt to avoid charges.
Celsius Network, the famous crypto lender, also lost an unspecified amount because of the 120 million dollars breach of BadgerDAO. Similarly, Poly Network lost almost 610 million dollars to a breach, which was later retrieved almost fully.
Although BitMart lost only a third of Poly Network’s amount, the recent heist is the biggest one among centralized exchanges. It adds to the lurking conspiracies that investing in crypto is highly dangerous.
