Hacked Cryptocurrency Exchange Cryptopia Suspends Trading and Goes Into Liquidation
- Grant Thornton, the liquidator assigned by Cryptopia, has announced the bad news.
- David Ruscoe, assigned to investigate the situation, added that, due to the complexities involved, the investigation could take “months rather than weeks”.
Cryptopia, the hacked New Zealand-based cryptocurrency exchange, has gone into liquidation and is suspending trading operations.
The news was announced by the liquidator assigned by Cryptopia, consultancy and audit firm network Grant Thornton New Zealand. David Ruscoe and Russell Moore from Grant Thornton NZ have been appointed to reportedly conduct an investigation and focus on securing assets for the benefit of stakeholders. During this time all trading services on Cryptopia will be suspended. Ruscoe said in the announcement:
“We realise Cryptopia’s customers will want to have this matter resolved as soon as possible. We will conduct a thorough investigation, working with several different stakeholders including management and shareholders, to find the solution that is in the best interests of customers and stakeholders.”
He added that due to the complexities involved, the investigation could take “months rather than weeks”. Grant Thornton NZ noted that the hack had caused a “severe” impact on the company’s trade. Cryptopia decided to go into liquidation after an unsuccessful attempt by its management to return the business to profitability.
Yesterday Cryptopia’s website went under maintenance without any message to the public, which caused some redditors to speculate on a potential new hack. Their fears were not unfounded, considering how the website went offline for a couple of days back in January before the company announced the “security breach which resulted in significant losses”.
Elementus, a blockchain data analytics firm, has estimated that the hackers were able to steal as much as $16 million in Ether and ERC-20 tokens. According to a tweet from Elementus in February, $3.2 million were traced in liquidations on exchanges such as Etherdelta, Binance and Bitbox.
Grant Thornton will be releasing an initial report on the case next week on the New Zealand Companies Office website.
- Popular Telegram bot Unibot, which is used to snipe trades on Uniswap, became a victim of a token approval exploit earlier today, when it was switching to a new router.
- After confirming the exploit, Unibot assured users that their keys and wallets were safe, and that the project will compensate all affected users.
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- DeFi protocol Balancer confirmed it was exploited almost a week after disclosing a critical vulnerability affecting several of its boosted pools.
- The platform did its best to mitigate some of the risks but was unable to pause the affected pools, and an estimated $980,000 in DAI were stolen in an attack.
- A cyber security incident at bankruptcy service provider Kroll has resulted in the exposure of “non-sensitive” customer data for claimants involved in the FTX and BlockFi cases.
- Both companies confirmed that account passwords, systems, and funds remained safe, but warned customers to be on the lookout for phishing scams.