Liquid Global Exchange loses $80 million worth of crypto assets in warm wallet hack only a few days after the Poly Network hack.
Liquid Global exchange experienced a hack that saw about $80 million worth of digital assets drained from its platform. The Japanese exchange confirmed the virtual heist on Twitter and blacklisted the addresses that allegedly received the stolen funds. There are four suspected blockchain addresses associated with hacker in different assets, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tron, and XRP. The trading platform also added that the hackers stole funds from its warm wallets. Since the hack, Liquid Global exchange has been moving assets to cold storage.
Liquid subsequently suspended all withdrawal and deposits on its platform and assured regular updates amid ongoing investigations. Shortly after the Twitter announcement, the price of Bitcoin started to drop below $45,000. As of press time, the king coin is trading at $44,700.
Despite the fact that Liquid Global is yet to disclose the exact stolen amount, Cointelegraph reported some figures. The media company stated that over 107 BTC ($4.7 million), 9,000,000 TRX, 11,000,000 XRP, close to $60 million worth of ETH and ERC-20 tokens were stolen. The total value of crypto assets sent to the four suspected addresses was $80 million, with $74 million still unaccounted for.
In addition, there are unconfirmed reports that the affected Ethereum wallet held deposits from Celsius Network. Earlier in April, the crypto yield provider announced that it had integrated with Liquid to grant the exchange’s users access to compounding yields on crypto. Furthermore, Celsius Network stated that its users can access free purchases and transactions for CEL tokens on Liquid. Liquid Global exchange became one of the first fiat-crypto exchanges to support the CEL token in 2019.
Liquid Exchange Hack Occurs amid Increased Calls for Crypto Regulation
A few exchanges have promptly responded to the Liquid hack by also blacklisting the suspicious addresses. According to KuCoin CEO Johnny Lyu on Twitter, the Chinese exchange will cease transactions with all suspected addresses.
This is allegedly not the first time the Liquid exchange is experiencing a hack. In November last year, the exchange was breached and hackers had access to its user’s personal information.
The hack on Liquid Global represents a worrisome trend on crypto exchange attacks and comes a few days after the Poly Network breach. The assailants initially drained over $600 million from the cross-chain DeFi site in one of the largest hacks in the history of decentralized finance. Like Liquid, Poly Network also identified and blacklisted a list of suspected addresses associated with the hacker. In addition, it also asked the attackers to return the stolen loot. Since then, Poly Network has received more than half of the stolen funds.
These hacks occur amid ongoing calls for increased regulation of the crypto space and government oversight. The Securities and Exchange Commission has been spearheading the cause and lobbying Congress to grant it increased authority over decentralized finance using the rule of law.