AscendEX cryptocurrency exchange has lost $77 million as a result of a hacker attack

Only the platform's hot wallets were affected, and now it is conducting an investigation

13.12.2021 - 07:55

2 min

What’s new? AscendEX, a Singapore-based cryptocurrency exchange, has claimed a hack on Ethereum, Polygon, and Binance Smart Chain (BSC) hot wallets. The attack was recorded around 22:00 UTC on December 11. According to the company’s representatives, cold wallets were not affected. This is stated in the platform’s post on Twitter.

22:00 UTC 12/11, We have detected a number of ERC-20, BSC, and Polygon tokens transferred from our hot wallet. Cold Wallet is NOT affected. Investigation underway. If any user’s funds are affected by the incident, they will be covered completely by AscendEX.— AscendEX (@AscendEX_Global) December 12, 2021

How much money did the hackers withdraw from the platform? According to the PeckShield analytics service, the attackers managed to steal a total of $77,7 million. The experts report that the scammers withdrew $8,5 million in the Polygon network tokens, $9,2 million in BSC, and $60 million in Ethereum. The largest amounts of assets were stolen in USDT and USDC stablecoins.

What do the AscendEX representatives say? According to the employees of the cryptocurrency exchange, an investigation into the incident is currently underway. The representatives of the platform have already promised to reimburse users for all stolen funds. However, AscendEX did not specify the exact amount of damage, nor did they say which tokens were affected.

What had happened before? In early December, there was a massive scale attack on the BitMart cryptocurrency exchange. In total, the hackers managed to withdraw around $150 million from the platform's hot wallets.

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