Crypto Exchange AscendEX Loses $80 Million in Hot Wallet Exploit

Crypto exchange AscendEX has lost over US$77 million worth of several high-profile cryptocurrencies, including Ether (ETH), Binance Coin (BNB) and various Polygon tokens, in a breach of its hot wallet.

Three Blockchains Affected

On December 11, AscendEX tweeted about the incident, reporting that it had detected a “number of ERC-20, BSC, and Polygon tokens transferred from our hot wallet”. More than US$77 million worth of various tokens across three blockchains was drained by the hacker(s).

$60 Million in ETH Stolen

The amount stolen was known after security firm PeckShield conducted research on the incident. According to the firm’s experts, the estimated losses were: US$60 million on Ethereum, $9.2 million on Binance Chain, and $8.5 million on Polygon. Stolen tokens included several stablecoins such as Tether (USDT) and USD Coin (USDC), along with DeFi tokens including Compound (COMP), Aave (AAVE), and the popular memecoin Shiba Inu (SHIB).

The event comes shortly after Crypto News Australia reported the US$200 million hack on centralised US crypto exchange BitMart, which suffered one of the biggest security breaches in crypto history on December 4.

Another exchange to have suffered a major security breach is Hong Kong-based platform Bilaxy, which lost US$450 million worth of several ERC-20 tokens in an August incident.