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

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

article-image

Sharaf Maksumov/Shutterstock, modified by Blockworks

share

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.

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:

Loading Tweet..

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.


Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. Subscribe to the Empire newsletter.

Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. Subscribe to the On the Margin newsletter.

The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. Subscribe to daily Solana news from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.

Tags

Upcoming Events

Salt Lake City, UT

MON - TUES, OCT. 7 - 8, 2024

Blockworks and Bankless in collaboration with buidlbox are excited to announce the second installment of the Permissionless Hackathon – taking place October 7-8 in Salt Lake City, Utah. We’ve partnered with buidlbox to bring together the brightest minds in crypto for […]

Salt Lake City, UT

WED - FRI, OCTOBER 9 - 11, 2024

Permissionless is a conference for founders, application developers, and users. Come meet the next generation of people building and using crypto.

recent research

Blinks Report Image.png

Research

Blinks enable the ability to vampire attack user monetization of existing networks by inserting onchain and financialized functionalities directly within the popular social feeds and digital experiences of today.

article-image

I was excited about being on the precipice of realigning societal incentives and solving many issues plaguing our modern financial world

article-image

Cypherpunk Holdings has rebranded to Sol Strategies in a pivot to a Solana-first investment approach

article-image

BitGo’s wrapped bitcoin (wBTC) has a new custodial challenger

article-image

Make no mistake: Tether makes a ton of money. But exactly how much depends a lot on the price of bitcoin.

article-image

A new report on stablecoin activity in emerging markets shows their immense popularity in Nigeria

article-image

Version 2.0 brings users closer to a “Coinbase experience”