KuCoin only lost $45 million in September hack

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Recently, KuCoin gave an update on the total damage from the September 25th KuCoin hack in which a total of $285 million was stolen from the exchange. In their update, KuCoin has confirmed that they were able to recover roughly $240 million of the stolen funds (84%); $222 million (78%) was recovered by internal efforts from the KuCoin team as well as its exchange partners, $17.45 million was recovered by law enforcement officials and security institutions, and the remaining $45.55 million (16%) is in the hands of the KuCoin hacker. 

Ever since the hack took place, the stolen funds have been on the move. A portion of the stolen funds have been sent to the digital currency mixing platforms Chipmixer and Wasabi Wallet; and another portion of the stolen funds have been sent to decentralized exchanges like Uniswap. Both the mixing services and decentralized exchanges allow individuals to convert one digital currency for another without going through any KYC or AML, which makes it very difficult for observers to track the stolen funds.

“It was found that a total of 154 tokens were affected by this incident, and the total value is approximately $285 million based on the market price of the day,” said KuCoin CEO Johnny Lyu.

Early on in the investigation, Lyu said that the KuCoin hacker has been identified and that there was substantial evidence that the suspect actually committed the crime, however, in the update regarding the total damage from the hack, Lyu said that “We have obtained substantial clues about the suspects, and the tracking is still in progress.”

Covered by insurance

Despite not being able to recover 100% of the stolen funds, KuCoin was able to make all of the users affected by the hack whole again. The KuCoin team dipped into their insurance fund to produce the remaining $45.55 million that they were not able to recover from the hacker.