Last Updated on October 22, 2023 by Bitfinsider
Coins.ph, a cryptocurrency exchange situated in the Philippines, is said to be the most recent victim of an exploit that could have cost the company 12.2 million XRP ($6 million). But it appears that some of these cash have already been recovered.
It was reported that the cryptocurrency exchange was hacked on October 17, citing a source with knowledge of the situation. Coins has not yet made a formal statement about whether the incident actually happened or not.
On-chain data, however, indicates that this exploit might have actually happened, as it was pointed out. Data from the blockchain explorer XRP scan shows that the cryptocurrency exchange saw 13 outflows totaling 999,999.Each transaction from the exchange sends 999 XRP to the same wallet, albeit the most recent batch does not appear to have been executed.
A further 200,000.999999 XRP was then removed from the exchange after that. It is important to note that because they all happened at the same time, all of these transactions took place in a span of 32 minutes. These transactions (the ones that were really executed) total more than 12.2 million XRP.
After receiving these monies, the claimed hacker sent them to a number of locations, including the cryptocurrency exchanges WhiteBIT, Simple Swap, ChangeNOW, and OKX. A WhiteBIT representative appeared to confirm the exploit, according to The Block.
The official said that they immediately blocked 445,000 after receiving a request to alert them to the address associated with the stolen tokens from the Phillipines-based exchange Coins. Additionally, it is claimed that WhiteBIT requested that the blockchain analytics software Cristal and Chainalysis flag addresses connected to the stolen XRP.
Since last year, when it was estimated that the crypto industry had lost over $2 billion due to hacking, attacks on companies in the sector have risen. Another cryptocurrency exchange, Huobi, suffered a loss of roughly $8 million in September as a result of these exploiters.
Notably, a recent investigation revealed that during the first half of 2023, the South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Upbit had a startling 159,000 hacking attempts. The fact that this number was twice as many hacking attempts than the exchange saw during the same period in 2022 is particularly notable.
The DeFi ecosystem hasn’t been ignored either, as a number of DeFi exchanges and platforms have fallen prey to hacks and attacks this year. Over $665 million had reportedly been lost as of June as a result of such incidents.
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Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the author, or any people mentioned in this article, are for informational purposes only, and they do not constitute financial, investment, legal, tax or other advice. Investing in or trading cryptocurrency or stocks comes with a risk of financial loss.
