Poloniex wallets drained of as much as $100 million in crypto assets

The exchange’s major shareholder Justin Sun confirmed the “hack incident”

November 10, 2023 07:41 am

Sharaf Maksumov/Shutterstock, modified by Blockworks

Cryptocurrency exchange Poloniex suffered unauthorized withdrawals beginning at around 5:30 am ET Friday.

The withdrawals from Poloniex include millions of dollars worth of ether (ETH), tron (TRX) stablecoins (USDT/USDC) and chainlink (LINK), plus more than 250 other tokens with aggregate values between $1,000 to $800,000 at the time of the theft.

A total of $23 million remains in the attacker’s primary wallet, but much of the haul has been transferred elsewhere, including $11 million in USDT, exchanged for ether.

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Security firm PeckShield first reported the suspicious transactions. Justin Sun, a major investor in Poloniex confirmed the incident on X:

“Poloniex maintains a healthy financial position and will fully reimburse the affected funds. Additionally, we are exploring opportunities for collaboration with other exchanges to facilitate the recovery of these funds,” Sun said.

Earlier, the exchange’s X account wrote, “our wallet has been disabled for maintenance,” but it subsequently reposted Sun’s account.

On-chain data analytics platforms Nansen and Arkham Intelligence observed substantial net outflows from the exchange:

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Arkham, tracking the flow of funds, puts the loss at closer to $100 million, monitoring $31.8 million in ETH, $28.3 million in TRX and $13.8 million in BTC.

The attack appears to have been initiated by a withdrawal of 4,900 ETH (about $10 million) from the exchange, followed by a flurry of withdrawals continuing until 6:40 am ET.

Poloniex subsequently offered the “Poloniex hacker” a 5% “white hat bounty” if the funds are returned within 7 days.

Earlier this year, the exchange settled with the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control for $7.6 million over sanctions violations.

Justin Sun has controlling stakes in both Poloniex and Huobi crypto exchanges and founded the Tron network.

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