Crypto Exchange BitMart Hacked, Suffered Nearly $200M in Losses

Crypto exchange platform BitMart was hacked and suffered an almost $200M-loss in a hot wallet compromise that was hosted on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) AND Ethereum (ETH) blockchain. PeckShield, leading blockchain security, and data analytics company, was the first to break the news via a tweet. They further explained that around $100 million worth of transfers were made in the Ethereum chain, while $96 million was on Binance Smart Chain.

At around 7:30 PM UTC, PeckShield noticed a questionable and excessive amount of outbound transfers. They discovered that a variety of coins had been sent out of BitMart’s hot wallet. The hackers created a combination of more than 20 tokens, which included BSC-USD, BNB, BPay, and Safemoon. Memecoins like Floki, BabyDoge, and Moonshot were also not exempted from the hack. Meanwhile, the funds that have been sent on to ETH mixing service Tornado Cash, in turn, will make it harder to track.

Initially, BitMart representatives claimed that the outflow transfers were routine withdrawals. Therefore, they claimed that the hack reports were ‘fake news’. A few hours later, the CEO of BitMart, Sheldon Xia, confirmed the security breach.

We have identified a large-scale security breach related to one of our ETH hot wallets and one of our BSC hot wallets. At this moment we are still concluding the possible methods used. The hackers were able to withdraw assets of the value of approximately USD 150 millions.

Sheldon also announced that BitMart is temporarily suspending withdrawals until further notice and asks for everyone’s patience in the current s