Crypto trading platform BitMart confirmed a “large-scale security breach” over the weekend, saying hackers stole about $150 million in assets.
“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,” BitMart said in a statement Saturday night. “We are now conducting a thorough security review and we will post updates as we progress.”
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BitMart added it was temporarily suspending withdrawals “until further notice.”
However, third-party blockchain-security and data-analytics company PeckShield Inc. — which first called attention to the breach Saturday night — estimated losses at nearly $200 million, and detailed a list of outflows that included about $100 million in losses from various crypto assets on the Ethereum blockchain and $96 million in losses from assets using the Binance Smart Chain. The stolen loot apparently included assets from nearly 50 tokens, including Binance Coin, Safemoon and Shiba Inu.
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The cyberheist is believed to be one of the largest from a centralized crypto exchange.
In August, a hacker stole more than $600 million in crypto assets from DeFi platform Poly Networks, but later returned the entire haul, claiming they had only taken the assets “for fun” and had wanted to point out a security vulnerability.
