- BitMart CEO Sheldon Xia will hold am AMA to go through the particulars of the hack over the weekend
- BitMart’t hot wallets were compromised with the loss of some $200 million worth of tokens
- BSV supporters have claimed that the hack was a chance to cover up BitMart’s allegations of a BSV double spend
BitMart CEO Sheldon Xia will hold an AMA on Telegram later today after the exchange was hacked for some $200 million worth of Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain tokens. In a series of tweets sent out last night, Xia said that the hack seemed to have come via a “stolen private key that had two of our hot wallets compromised”, but further information is yet to be provided. Xia also confirmed that the exchange will honor any losses and will “compensate affected users”.
Peckshield Revealed BitMart Hack
Security firm Peckshield was first to report the hack, posting yesterday to posit that a hot wallet had been compromised before posting a list of the tokens on both the Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain networks that had been taken:
hot wallet compromised? @BitMartExchange https://t.co/pfb7215pBO pic.twitter.com/v2C1KYtaqd
— PeckShield Inc. (@peckshield) December 5, 2021
Peckshield also showed messages from BitMart support teams on Discord denying that a hack had taken place, but to be fair this could have been before anything official had been confirmed. In a post later that day it also posted a simple graph to show where the stolen funds had been sent, with money flowing through exchange 1inch and then onto the ETH mixing service Tornado Cash:
Pretty straightforward: transfer-out, swap, and wash @sheldonbitmart pic.twitter.com/LyA03sbgCZ
— PeckShield Inc. (@peckshield) December 5, 2021
BSV Supporters Take the Chance to Spread Conspiracy Theories
The BitMart hack was also seen as an opportunity to spread some nice conspiracy theories from the BSV community regarding the double spend that took place on the network earlier this year after a series of 51% attacks:
How much you want to bet that the evidence of the BSV “double spend” was now lost in the hack of this exchange with secret ties to Vitalik? https://t.co/sWZ1YKfpaV
— Kurt Wuckert Jr 🍌🍌 (@kurtwuckertjr) December 5, 2021
There is very steep irony, of course, in BSV supporters crowing about a lack of evidence to back up a story when that is exactly how its cult leader, Craig Wright, has gone about trying to claim he is Satoshi Nakamoto.
