The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, reported Friday that scammers stole about $100 million worth of cryptocurrency.
The total amount raised was US$580 million, but according to company boss Changpeng Zhao, over 80% of it was frozen immediately and the damage was only about US$100 million.
He tweeted that “an exploit” in the system resulted in additional production of the exchange’s dedicated currency, BNB, but insisted the issue had been “contained”, telling his seven million followers: “Your funds are safe.” ”
It is among the biggest thefts in cryptocurrency history and comes in a year that scammers exploiting the sector have made off with billions of dollars.
In the most damaging incident, blockchain game Axie Infinity was hacked for more than $500 million in late March.
Both scams exploited weaknesses in “cross-chain bridges” — the means used by investors to move assets from one blockchain to another.
Blockchains are digital ledgers that store details of transactions – the largest is bitcoin, but there are thousands of others.
Binance, which dominates the sector and boasted of processing $32 trillion worth of transactions last year, said in a statement that “a total of 2 million BNB were withdrawn,” bringing the heist to $580 million rated.
Zhao later clarified in an interview with MSNBC that most of these coins had been frozen.
Prominent crypto figures had been speaking of a $600 million theft on social media late Thursday, hours before the firm made its first statement.
“Someone on BNB just got hacked for (roughly) 2 million BNB,” wrote a developer using the name foobar on Twitter.
“The attacker spits funds out through liquidity pools, using every possible bridge to get to safer chains. Complete chaos in the chain.”
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