Liquid crypto exchange hacked in Japan, nearly $100 million in coins taken

Hackers have drained Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Liquid of $97 million worth of Ethereum and other digital coins.

The company, in a tweet posted late Thursday, announced the compromise and said it is moving assets that were not affected into more secure “cold wallet” storage. The company has also suspended deposits and withdrawals.

“Liquid’s teams are still assessing the attack vector used and taking measures to mitigate the impact to users,” the company said in a blog post. “Liquid will continue to do everything in its power to mitigate the impact from this incident and restore full service as soon as possible.”

Liquid did not put a dollar figure on the amount, but blockchain analytics company Elliptic said its analysis estimates the losses at about $97 million.

Of that, $45 million were in Ethereum tokens, which are being converted into Ether, preventing the hacker from having those assets frozen. Other cryptos taken in the heist include Bitcoin, XRP, and stablecoins.

Important Notice:
We are sorry to announce that #LiquidGlobal warm wallets were compromised, we are moving assets into the cold wallet.

We are currently investigating and will provide regular updates. In the meantime deposits and withdrawals will be suspended.
— Liquid Global Official (@Liquid_Global) August 19, 2021

Liquid is one of the 20 biggest crypto exchanges, as ranked by daily trading volume, per CoinMarketCap. In the past 24 hours, it has traded nearly $141 million in crypto.

The news of the hack comes just over a week after hackers took $600 million in cryptocurrency, which is likely the biggest heist ever in the world of decentralized finance. Those attackers returned half of what they stole the next day and eventually returned almost all of it ($135 million remains locked in an account that requires a password from the hacker).