BitMart CEO Says They Will Compensate $196 Million Hack’s Victims
The CEO of Bitmart made a promise to all victims of the recent cyber-attack on the exchange that they will be compensated. The exchange is looking to resume withdrawals on Tuesday. The ban on withdrawals was put in place as a quick security fix after the attack.
Victims of the Attack to Get Compensated by the Exchange
After the recent hack that led to the perpetrator carting away $196 million worth of cryptocurrency, Bitmart has assured all victims of reimbursement. Apart from this, the exchange will resume normal operations on the 7th of December, 2021.
Over the weekend, the Cayman-based crypto exchange suffered a major attack after the private keys to two of its hot wallets were compromised. The CEO of the exchange himself confirmed the attack on his Twitter page.
The two wallets attacked were the Binance Smart Chain and the Ethereum wallets, and as announced by the CEO the value of the attack is around $150 million. But reports from a cryptographic security firm, PeckShield stated that $196 million was carted away in the attack – $100 million on the Ethereum wallet and $96 million from the Binance Smart Chain network.
After the security checks were initiated on the exchange, after the attack to identify the affected assets, the company confirmed that the exchange is ready for normal operations starting Tuesday, December 7.
The Exchange mentioned in a statement that the sum lost to the attack is just a small percentage of the total assets on Bitmart and it has been other wallets are not affected.
After the incident, Sheldon Xia, the founder, and CEO of Bitmart pledged to reimburse every user who lost their assets to the attack from the exchange’s funds. He said in a Twitter post that the exchange will be bearing the cost and will compensate every user affected.
To put things in perspective, crypto exchanges run two kinds of wallets; cold and hot wallets. While the cold wallets serve as reserves, the hot wallets are connected to the internet to allow for fast withdrawals and deposits from users. Because of their exposure to the internet, hot wallets are more prone to attack than cold wallets.
In August, Liquid, a Japanese exchange, had a similar attack like Bitmart’s where about $96 million was lost. Recent months have seen the DeFi space record major attacks as well. A major one is like two days before the Bitmart attack, BadgerDAO’s frontend website got a malicious script inserted that led to users depositing funds into the hacker’s wallet. In the attack, about $120 million were stolen which makes it the biggest attack on the DeFi space to date.
