Crypto exchange Bitmart loses $196m in hack

Bitmart, the centralized crypto exchange, has been on the wrong end of a sizable hack, losing $196m in various cryptos.

The hack first became known following a tweet from security analysis firm Peckshield on Saturday evening.

One of Bitmart’s addresses is showing outgoings of token balances worth in the tens of millions of dollars to a receiving address which goes by the name of “Bitmart Hacker”.

Following up from its original tweet, Peckshield said the losses were $100m in various cryptos on the Ethereum blockchain and $96m on the Binance Smart Chain.

The way the hacker got the tokens was by using DEX aggregator 1inch to swap the stolen assets for ETH, while using another address to put the ETH into Tornado Cash, the privacy mixer, thereby making it more difficult to track the stolen funds.

Bitmart initially referred to the outgoing funds as routine withdrawals, even referring to the hack as “fake news” via its Telegram channel.

Then, a few hours later, Bitmart CEO Sheldon Xia confirmed that a hack had taken place due to a “security breach”.

The $196m lost represents one of the largest crypto hacks yet.