Through a string of dubious transactions, WazirX, one of the top cryptocurrency exchanges in India, lost $234 million today.
WazirX declared the temporary suspension of withdrawals from the exchange and verified the security breach.
Earlier, blockchain security platform Cyvers Alerts reported that their system detected multiple suspicious transactions involving WazirX’s Safe Multisig wallet on the Ethereum network.
📢 Update: We're aware that one of our multisig wallets has experienced a security breach. Our team is actively investigating the incident. To ensure the safety of your assets, INR and crypto withdrawals will be temporarily paused. Thank you for your patience and understanding.…
— WazirX: India Ka Bitcoin Exchange (@WazirXIndia) July 18, 2024
Funds totaling $234.9 million have been transferred to a new location. Each transaction’s caller is funded by Tornado Cash, it added.
Already, $7.6 million worth of PEPE has been removed from the dubious wallet “0x04b2,” and GALA and USDT have been converted to ETH.
Over $100 million worth of Shiba Inu (SHIB) tokens were taken out, making them the most popular type of withdrawn money, according to Lookonchain data. Ether (ETH) worth $52 million, Matic (MATIC) worth $11 million, and Pepe (PEPE) worth $6 million came next. These assets are already being dumped by the hacker.
Update:#WazirX has ~$230M in assets stolen. Including:
— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) July 18, 2024
5.43T $SHIB($102M)
15,298 $ETH($52.5M)
20.5M $MATIC($11.24M)
640.27B $PEPE($7.6M)
5.79M $USDT
135M $GALA($3.5M)
…
‼️Please note that the hacker is selling these assets!https://t.co/1uOozAVeM1 https://t.co/ogtVSFITK9 pic.twitter.com/3vPmxqXwbL
Web3 Analyst at CryptoQuant Bradley Park told CryptoNews: “This is the SHIB reserve on WazirX. You can see that 5.4T has been taken off the exchange. These assets are likely to be sold for Ethereum at any time.”
As per WazirX’s latest Proof of Reserve report, the total holdings of the exchange were valued at just above $502 million.
The hack is a massive setback to the Indian crypto community which is already under scrutiny from regulators. Indian exchanges are under heavy pressure because of low trading volumes since the implementation of 1% TDS on each transaction. In order to escape paying those taxes, retail customers are favoring foreign exchanges.
Earlier, India’s FUI (Financial Intelligence Unit) blocked URLs of several foriegn crypto exchanges including Binance for not complying with local AML policies.