Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Liquid Global gave a statement on 19th August via Twitter that its hot digital wallet was hacked by anonymous hackers in a stolen expected to be $97 million worth of cryptocurrencies.

The exchange tweeted early in the morning, “Important Notice: 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.”

Liquid did not officially provide any estimate for the compromise. On further questioning, they confronted that the investigation was carried by Japan’s Financial Service Agency and the watchdog wasn’t available for any comment.

However, a blockchain analytics company Elliptic stated that, according to its analysis about $97 million digital assets have been stolen by the hackers. As claimed by Elliptic, out of total stolen tokens, $45 million worth tokens were being already converted to Ethereum via decentralized exchanges which requires no intermediaries. “This enables the hacker to avoid having these assets frozen- as is possible with many Ethereum tokens,” they said in a blog post.

Currently, the alleged hacker’s BTC wallet contains $4.81 million worth of bitcoin, ETH address holds $44.5 million worth of ethereum, and $24.76 million in other altcoins, while the XRP address holds over $22 million worth. Earlier today, the hacker’s addresses hold around $74 million worth of cryptocurrencies but have already sent out $11 million to three other wallets.

Among top 20 crypto exchanges, Liquid ranked globally by daily trading volumes. In latest update Liquid wrote in Twitter, “We will continue to work with the community to take the appropriate actions.”

It’s the second major crypto heist to take place within span of a week. On 10th August, hacker named ‘Mr White Hat’ stole $600 million worth of cryptocurrencies from Poly Network.

Joyashree Dey

CBW - External Analyst

INDIA