Singapore-based cryptocurrency exchange, Crypto.com, announced the temporal suspension of withdrawals on Monday, January 17th, after its hot wallets were compromised.
Crypto.com halted withdrawals after users reported “unauthorized activity” on their wallets. Billy Markus, the co-founder of Dogecoin, also pointed to a suspicious transaction pattern on Etherscan.
We have a small number of users reporting suspicious activity on their accounts.
We will be pausing withdrawals shortly, as our team is investigating. All funds are safe.
— Crypto.com (@cryptocom) January 17, 2022
Breached, But No Funds Lost
Roughly 14 hours after the initial announcement, Crypto.com announced to its users that withdrawals had resumed and all funds were safe and accounted for.
Insisting that no funds were compromised, Crypto.com advised users to sign back into their apps, exchange accounts, and reset their two-factor authentication.
Diferring Reports – Up to $15 Million in ETH Was Stolen
Despite declaring that funds were safe, multiple sources have reported that up to $15 million or 4,600 ETH was stolen from the exchange. Many users to have complained have reported losses between 2-5 ETH.
One such victim is, Ben Baller, a crypto enthusiast and entrepreneur. According to Baller, his losses amounted to 4.25 ETH, or the equivalent of $13,924 USD.
It’s wild. After some digging. Since after my 4.28ETH was taken from my @cryptocom wallet, I began to check their ETH wallet and in the last 6 hours they’ve been cleaned out for about 5,000ETH! So this ain’t just a small amount of users. That’s $16M
— BEN BALLER
(@BENBALLER) January 17, 2022
On the Flipside
- Crypto.com reportedly holds 100% of its user funds in offline cold wallets, using an institutional-grade solution by Ledger.
Why You Should Care
While hacks and scams are running rampant in decentralized finance, it remains unclear how a centralized exchange of such renown was defrauded of $15 million.
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