BitMax, now called AscendEX, suffered a terrible hack on Saturday. The hacking led to an estimated loss of USD 78 million in digital assets. Now, the rebranded company wants to compensate affected consumers.
The AscendEX team updated users on the incident, stating that hackers hijacked one of the exchange’s hot wallets, granting them access to and transfer of digital assets located on the Ethereum (ETH), Binance Smart Chain (BSC), and Polygon (MATIC) blockchains.
Hackers Targeted Hot Wallets
Cold wallets were not the primary targets of the attack, officials at AscendEX confirmed. The stolen assets are insignificant looking at the total assets domiciled on the exchange.
While consumers have been satiated by the decision of the exchange to reimburse them, the big wigs at AscendEX are working towards a robust compensating modality which caters to everyone who lost an asset.
The exchange has also called for assistance by regulators and other forensic startups on the blockchain. The officials at the business say that they will partner with other analysis companies that monitor moved assets in a bid to recover the lost assets.
In addition, wallets linked to the “money heist” will be blocked. The wallet addresses that facilitated the whole shady operation will also be blocked.
PeckShield, an analytics firm, believes that the total loss is estimated at USD 77.7 million. Half of that came from compromised Ethereum assets.
The assets that were stolen were tokens. Examples are USDT and USDC. All stablecoins. The data reports also showed the illegal transfer of other uncommon tokens like taraxa. Little fractions of other popular digital assets such as Shiba Inu (SHIB), AAVE, and compound (COMP) were also moved.
This breach had brought transaction services on AscendEX’s to a temporary close. It is likely that the central exchange will open its website to allow users to trade after a comprehensive security audit has taken place.
Bitmart Was Another Unfortunate Target
On Saturday, a security firm reported that hackers stole $196 million from cryptocurrency trading platform Bitmart.
Bitmart confirmed the incident in an official statement late Saturday night, describing it as a “massive security breach” in which hackers stole around $150 million in assets. However, Peckshield, a blockchain security and data analytics startup, estimates the damage to be closer to $200 million.
Pending Withdrawals Until Investigation Concludes
The data firm noted that withdrawals had been temporarily halted on Bitmart pending a comprehensive security investigation.
He noted a continual outflow of tens of millions of dollars from one of Bitmart’s addresses to an address that Etherscan referred to as the “Bitmart Hacker” on Saturday.
The Ethereum blockchain lost roughly $100 million, while the Binance smart chain lost another $96 million in value. These figures were released by Peckshield after the breach happened. The hackers stole over 20 tokens, including binance coin, safemoon, and Shiba Inu.
AscendEX traded USD 190 million on CoinGecko daily trading chart before the unfortunate hit. Since then, trading volumes had dipped to USD 104 million, sending it to the 35th position for trading volumes in the last 24 hours.