FTX investigates potential $473 million hack

New York
CNN
–

FTX, which filed for bankruptcy on Friday, said it is investigating whether crypto assets were stolen and took all of its digital assets offline. Cryptocurrency risk management firm Elliptic said the assets could be worth more than $400 million.

in Tweet early SaturdayFTX General Counsel Ryne Miller said the company has “initiated precautionary steps” and moved all of its digital assets into cold storage, meaning the crypto wallet is no longer connected to the internet. This comes after the announcement on Friday that the stock exchange Filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Although the theft is not confirmed, Ellipse said, It appears that $473 million in crypto assets were stolen from FTX.

The It was “expedited” Friday night “to mitigate damage when monitoring unauthorized transactions,” Miller said in a tweet.

Miller tweeted late Friday that FTX had “checked for anomalies” regarding wallet movements “related to the FTX consolidation.” Balances across exchanges.” He added that the facts are still unclear and that the company will share more information as soon as possible.

Stablecoins and other lost tokens are quickly being converted into Ether, the second largest cryptocurrency after Bitcoin, on decentralized exchanges, Elliptical said. Elliptic said it is a common technique used by hackers to prevent their funds from being confiscated.

FTX, until last week, one of the strongest players in the cryptocurrency industry, was experiencing a rapid collapse. Sam Bankman Fred, its 30-year-old founder and CEO, has resigned He lost his fortune of $16 billion in less than a week.

In its bankruptcy filing, FTX said it had between $10 billion and $50 billion in assessed liabilities and assets.

Bankmann-Fried books in A Twitter thread Friday. “Hopefully things will find a way to recover.”

With increased scrutiny of crypto exchanges, Singapore-based crypto.com admitted to mistakenly sending more than $400 million worth of Ethereum to the wrong account. Its CEO, Chris Marsalek, He said on Twitter Three weeks ago, 320,000 ETH was transferred to a company’s account at competing exchange Gate.io rather than one of its offline or “cold” wallets.

And despite the refund, users are pulling out of the platform out of fear of the same outcome as FTX. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao Issue a warning On Twitter, he said, “If an exchange has to move large amounts of cryptocurrency before or after showing its wallet addresses, that’s a clear sign of problems.”

“We have since strengthened our process and systems to better manage these inland transfers,” said Marsalek chirp Sunday.