Hackers Steal $200M Worth Of Shiba Inu, Saitama, And Other Tokens From Bitmart Exchange

On Saturday, the crypto exchange Bitmart lost almost $200 million in a hack involving the Ethereum ETHER/USD and Binance Smart Chain blockchains. 

According to the blockchain security and data analytics provider Peckshield, the hackers took around $100 million in Ethereum-based coins and $96 million in coins on the Binance Smart Chain. Almost 50 different types of tokens were stolen.

The theft included Shiba Inu SHIB/USD, Binance Coin BNB/USD, BabyDoge, Saitama SAITAMA/USD, Dogelon Mars ELON/USD, Crypto.com CRO, Decentraland MANA/USD, and Akita Inu AKITA/USD.  The most popular meme coin, Dogecoin DOGE/USD, was not included in the list of stolen assets.

The hackers first took 893,755,205,648 SHIB, that was worth $32.7 million on the day of the transfer. They then followed up by transferring $28.5 million in Saitama Inu and $6.8 million in Dogelon.

Bitmart CEO Sheldon Xia confirmed the hack over a tweet. He said, "We have identified a large-scale security breach related to one of our ETH hot wallets and one of our BSC hot wallets. At this moment, we are still concluding the possible methods used. The hackers were able to withdraw assets of the value of approximately USD 150 million."

Later in a separate tweet, he informed users about the suspension of withdrawals because of the hack. 

In August, a hacker stole close to $600 million in a cross-chain Poly Network attack. 

According to Slowmist, the original funds used by the attacker were in the privacy coin Monero XMR/USD, which were exchanged for Binance Coin BNB/USD, Ethereum, Polygon, and other tokens.

Related Link: DeFi Theft and Fraud Losses Reach $10.5 billion in 2021, Mostly on Ethereum