Liquid, a cryptocurrency exchange based in Japan, has suspended its deposits and withdrawals after its warm wallets were compromised by a hacker.
Liquid is a leading cryptocurrency exchange with customers from over 100 countries that processes more than 800,000 daily transactions amounting to $1.1B+ daily trade volume this year.
After learning that its wallets were hacked, Liquid had to move some of its assets into cold wallets. The exchange is currently investigating the incident and will provide regular updates.
The hackers who attacked Liquid walked away with around $94 million worth of digital assets, according to Elliptic, a blockchain analytics firm. The attackers can avoid having these assets frozen, as is the case with many Ethereum tokens.
“The stolen funds include $45 million in Ethereum tokens, which are currently being exchanged for ETH on DEXs such as Uniswap and SushiSwap,” Elliptic stated. “This enables the hacker to avoid having these assets frozen – as is possible with many Ethereum tokens.”
However, the exchange later posted a Twitter update saying they were trying to freeze the funds:
“We are currently tracing the movement of the assets and working with other exchanges to freeze and recover funds.”
The news about the Liquid hack came shortly after the theft of $611 million from Poly Network, which was the biggest cryptocurrency hack in history. The company then offered to reward the attacker $500,000 if they would agree to return the stolen cryptocurrency. The attacker then has steadily transferred the stolen assets back to the network’s wallets.
In its Private Industry Notification issued in July, the FBI warned cryptocurrency users and the operators of third-party exchanges and payment platforms that they could be targets of attacks that could lead to significant financial losses.
