BitMart, the self-described "most trusted cryptocurrency platform," revealed Saturday that hackers stole approximately $150 million worth of assets from a pair of hot wallets used to store Ethereum (ETH) and Binance Smart Chain (BSC) tokens.
"The affected ETH hot wallet and BSC hot wallet carry a small percentage of assets on BitMart and all of our other wallets are secure and unharmed," it said. "We are now conducting a thorough security review and we will post updates as we progress. At this moment we are temporarily suspending withdrawals until further notice."
BitMart CEO Sheldon Xia shared more information about the company's response to the hack in a series of tweets early this morning. "This security breach was mainly caused by a stolen private key that had two of our hot wallets compromised," Xia said in the first tweet. "Other assets with BitMart are safe and unharmed."
2/4 BitMart will use our own funding to cover the incident and compensate affected users. We are also talking to multiple project teams to confirm the most reasonable solutions such as token swaps. No user assets will be harmed.December 6, 2021
Xia said he is "confident that deposit and withdrawal functions will gradually begin in December 7, 2021." BitMart said in a separate tweet that Xia will "conduct an AMA at 8PM EST Dec 6 on Telegram to share more info regarding the security breach, compensation arrangement, and how we plan to resume operation."
The Record reported that the $150 million worth of tokens stolen from BitMart makes this the second largest cryptocurrency-related heist of the year. That amount pales in comparison to the $600 million stolen from Poly Network in August, but all of those funds were returned, so one could argue that BitMart's actually in the lead.
