AscendEX bitcoin exchange hacker began laundering assets

by in Cryptocurrency News

Laundering

The hacker who hacked the AscendEX cryptocurrency exchange in December 2021 began selling stolen assets.

According to PeckShield experts, the attacker exchanged ERC-20 tokens, including Route, Rio Fuel, MATIC, REVV, Clearpool, and MAPS, for Ethereum through the Uniswap decentralized exchange.

The sales volume exceeded $1 million, the hacker aggregated funds in one wallet. At the time of writing, the address contains 2,459 ETH, worth about $7.2 million.

On December 12, AscendEX confirmed the hack of Ethereum, Polygon, and Binance Smart Chain hot wallets.

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PeckShield estimated the damage at $77.7 million. The largest amount of stolen assets fell on tokens in the Ethereum network - $60 million.

AscendEX was created in 2018 under the name BitMax. In March 2021, the company rebranded, and in November it raised $50 million from Polychain Capital, Hack VC, and other investors.

Recall that in January, PeckShield experts reported on the hacking of the Crypto.com cryptocurrency platform. The latter's team said that customer funds are safe and withdrawals are on hold due to "suspicious activity."

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Two days later, Crypto.com confirmed that about 400 user accounts had been hacked. The damage amounted to about $34 million. The platform fully compensated for the losses of customers from its own funds.