Leading Japanese Crypto Exchange Loses $100 Million to Hackers

Liquid Global, a leading cryptocurrency exchange in Japan was hit by a hacking attack and the exchange and approximately $100 million (£73 million) were stolen.

The exchange announced that a few of the digital currency wallets have been compromised. So far, this is the second biggest crypto heist in history. Last week, Poly Network was also targeted by hackers and the company lost $600 million to hackers. However, $47 million were returned to Poly Network. 

Unfortunately, the situation for Liquid Global is not the same. The company tweeted:

The following assets had been transferred to hacker’s following addresses (Further investigation to come):
BTC: 1Fx1bhbCwp5LU2gHxfRNiSHi1QSHwZLf7q
ETH/EWT: 0x5578840aae68682a9779623fa9e8714802b59946
TRX: TSpcue3bDfZNTP1CutrRrDxRPeEvWhuXbp
XRP: rfapBqj7rUkGju7oHTwBwhEyXgwkEM4yby

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

The ‘warm’ or ‘hot’ wallets mentioned in the tweet refer to digital wallets that are easily accessible and are usually based online. On the contrary, cold wallets are available offline, trickier to access and henceforth, more secure than the other kind. 

According to Elliptic, a blockchain analytics company, around $97 million were taken away and Ethereum and Bitcoin were the biggest haul. The company claims that it is tracing the lost digital currencies and collaborating with other cryptocurrency exchanges to freeze and recover the stolen assets. 

With millions of customers across 100+ countries, it is among the top 20 crypto exchanges of the world with the highest daily trading volume. Apart from this, it is not the only Japanese cryptocurrency exchange to be hit by a hacking attack. MtGox collapsed in 2014 after losing around half a billion dollar worth of bitcoins. In 2018, Coincheck lost $530 million to a crypto heist. 

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