One of the biggest crypto exchanges in Japan, Liquid, announced a security breach in its hot wallets, with hackers illicitly taking as much as $94 million worth of cryptocurrencies.
The exchange announced the news about the hack on Twitter, adding that it already took action to transfer the remaining funds to a safer offline location.
“We are sorry to announce that #LiquidGlobal warm wallets were compromised, we are moving assets into the cold wallet. We are currently investigating and will provide regular updates. In the meantime deposits and withdrawals will be suspended.,” the exchange wrote on Twitter.
The company also revealed the affected wallet addresses. It turns out attackers focused on Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tron, and Ripple, with hackers stealing approximately 107 BTC, 9 million TRX tokens, 11 million XRP tokens, and almost $60 million worth of ETH and other ERC-20-based tokens.
Reports from analysts suggest that the breached ETH wallet contained deposits from crypto yield provider Celsius Network, which announced a partnership with Liquid for compounding return on digital asset purchases for Liquid Global customers.
The news about the hack pushed the crypto community to act accordingly, with KuCoin’s CEO Jonny Lyu announcing that the hacker's addresses have been added to the blacklist of KuCoin shortly after the hack.
The illicitly acquired funds are already on the move, as hackers are starting to convert the stolen coins and tokens to ETH via DeFi peer-to-peer exchanges, Elliptic noted. However, the transfer to ETH is only aiding Liquid in tracking the stolen funds.
This is the latest hit on crypto security since the start of 2021, with DeFi crypto platform Poly Network got hit with as much as $610 million worth of cryptos theft, which is dubbed as the largest in the decentralized finance realm.
However, in the days following the attack, the Poly Network hackers returned almost the entire amount of stolen funds, with Poly Network even posting a job offer for the hackers.
The news about the hack has put pressure on crypto prices, as Bitcoin and Ethereum lost around two percent daily, to trade at $44,534.88, and $2,992.20, respectively. However, the dip below $3,000 may turn to be pivotal for Ethereum’s future price performance, while Bitcoin’s fall isn’t that much of a threat.
Ripple is in the green, increasing almost two percent in 24-hours, reaching $1.12 per XRP token, while Tron (TRX) slipped three percent down to trade at $0.08298 as of press time.