Taylor app loses $1.5M worth of ETH in recent hack

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Cryptocurrency trading app Taylor has fallen victim to a hack, resulting in the loss of 2,578 ETH worth about $1.5 million as well as 7 percent of its total TAY token supply.

In a Medium post, the startup confirmed that on May 22, its team “arrived at the office and found that we’ve been hacked and all of our funds have been stolen.” According to Taylor, the hackers siphoned funds from multiple sources in a single wallet, which they then transferred to a bigger one. Incidentally, this is the same wallet where CypheriumChain’s funds ended up.

CypheriumChain was another project that suffered a hack recently, losing 17,000 ETH worth an estimated $9.8 million. Taylor believed its hacker “is the same person/group that supposedly hacked CypheriumChain.”

At press time, the wallet where funds from both projects ended up has 48,440 ETH in it, worth more than $28 million.

Meanwhile, the missing TAY tokens were tracked down to cryptocurrency exchange IDEX. According to Taylor, “After that we noticed an attempt to dump the stolen tokens on IDEX, then we asked the IDEX team to delist TAY until we have a clear vision on the situation.”

The startup, which recently launched an initial coin offering (ICO) for the development of a cryptocurrency trading assistant, called the hack “a dark day for Taylor.” In a separate post, the Taylor team confirmed that the hackers managed to access one of their devices and got their hands on one of the 1Password files.

The company will distribute a new token to reimburse its users, and is also considering a rebrand “to help us leave behind this unfortunate episode.” Users who have a balance at block number 5663273 will receive a new token, except for the hacker. According to the Taylor team, “The goal is to make sure the hacker does not receive the new token. We analyzed all transactions made by him, and we know exactly where the stolen tokens are.”

In an open letter, Taylor co-founder and CEO Fabio Seixas apologized for the incident and appealed for the community “to join forces to help us overcome this situation.”

“We now have only about $25,000. To be honest, it doesn’t even pay this month’s bill. This incident forced us to stop, step back and think about the future,” Seixas said.