13 September 2023
On Tuesday, September 12, centralized crypto exchange CoinEx became the latest victim of a hack. At the time of the reports, over $27 million in crypto had already been carted away by the attackers. However, almost 24 hours later, the reports rolling in suggest that the exchange may have lost double the amounts that were originally reported.
CoinEx Crypto Losses Rise To $55.5 Million
The initial reports for the CoinEx hack showed that the attackers were able to move around $27.8 million from the exchange. But as investigators dig further into the attack, the losses have come up to around $55.5 million in crypto lost so far.
According to a breakdown posted by Wu Blockchain, a platform run by Chinese reported Colin Wu, the losses extended into lesser-known tokens as well. The majority of the losses were from assets such as Ethereum, Bitcoin, and XRP, with assets on the BSC, Polygon, and Kadena blockchain also running into the millions.
The ETH amount drained alone came out to over $18 million, as shown in the breakdown, while over $11 million was stolen in Tron’s TRX token. Other notable transactions include $6 million in XRP, over $6.2 million in BNB, $5.9 million in Bitcoin (BTC), $2.5 million in Solana’s SOL, $1.7 million in Dagger’s XDAG, and $1.12 million in Kadena’s KDA. There was also a little over $440,000 stolen in Bitcoin Cash’s BCH.
At the time of writing, a total of $55,567,468 has been confirmed stolen from the hacking incident from the exchange. The crypto stolen from the crypto exchange was sent to 19 wallet addresses spanning 12 blockchains.
Hack Continues To Unravel
In the aftermath of what has been the largest centralized crypto exchange hack in 2023, CoinEx has promised to compensate all of its affected users in full. The statement which came a couple of hours after the incident was identified told users:
You have our solemn promise that a detailed timeline and comprehensive report about this incident will be shared with the community as swiftly as possible.
For now, users are unable to transact on the crypto exchange as deposits and withdrawals remain unavailable. However, the exchange said in its statement that this was only a temporary measure and that these activities “will resume after a thorough review.”
Over the day, the exchange has also taken to posting the wallet addresses it has identified to be linked to the attack. This is being done in an effort to raise awareness about their activities. “We urge affected projects and fellow industry colleagues to assist in flagging and freezing these questionable addresses,” CoinEx said in an X post.