Japan’s Liquid Exchange hacked, nearly $80M on in digital assets missing

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A Japanese digital assets exchange has become the latest victim of a security breach, allegedly losing up to $80 million to the hackers. Liquid Exchange confirmed that the attackers had targeted its hot wallets and made away with 100+ BTC, 9 million XRP and tens of millions of ERC-20 tokens. It has since moved the other digital assets into its cold wallets.

Liquid took to Twitter to reveal that it had fallen victim to the ever-present threat of hackers in the digital currency space.

“We are sorry to announce that Liquid Global warm wallets were compromised, we are moving assets into the cold wallet. We are currently investigating and will provide regular updates. In the meantime deposits and withdrawals will be suspended,” it stated.

Important Notice:
We are sorry to announce that #LiquidGlobal warm wallets were compromised, we are moving assets into the cold wallet.

We are currently investigating and will provide regular updates. In the meantime deposits and withdrawals will be suspended.

— Liquid Global Official (@Liquid_Global) August 19, 2021

The exchange listed the addresses of the digital currencies that the hackers had stolen. They included 107 BTC, worth $4.7 million sent to a BTC address in 10 transactions, although all these transactions were sourced from just two addresses. At press time, the hacker’s wallet still holds 107.3 BTC.

The biggest heist was in ETH and ERC-20 tokens. On-chain data shows that the hacker’s Ethereum address contains 14,944 Ether, worth $44.8 million at press time. It also contains $24.8 million in ERC-20 tokens, ranging from $7.9 million in Anchor tokens to $4.2 million in Cosplay tokens and $6.3 million in XENO NFT HUB tokens.

The hacker also reportedly got away with 9 million in TRON and 11 million in XRP, collectively worth just above $10 million, bringing the total amount of assets stolen to over $80 million.

Immediately following the hack, Kucoin exchange CEO Johnny Lyu expressed his support for Liquid Exchange and pledged to blacklist the addresses used by the hackers.

We are aware of the #LiquidGlobal security incident, and the hacker's addresses have been added to the blacklist of #KuCoin. Hope everything is OK. 🙏 https://t.co/IasscGItZH

— Johnny_KuCoin (@lyu_johnny) August 19, 2021

The hack comes barely a week since Poly Network fell victim to one of the biggest exploits in the budding decentralized finance (DeFi) world. The network, which allows users to swap tokens across multiple blockchains including Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain, lost $611 million. It has, however, received a majority of the tokens back from “Mr. White Hat” and even proceeded to give him a role at the project as the chief security advisor.