AscendEx being one of the last cryptocurrency exchange companies to be hacked in 2021 losing about $78million has promised to reimburse its affected customers.
A Singaporean digital currency exchange, AscendEx formerly known as BitMax was the latest victim to a security breach, losing over $77.7 million in a hack. The theft was noticed by the company when series of unauthorized transfers from one of their hot wallets were flagged on December 11, 2021. The cold wallets were, however, unaffected and all other hot wallet assets were transferred as they investigated the attack.
According to PeckShield, the blockchain security company, it was estimated that $77.7 million worth of assets were taken across three blockchains: $60 million from Ethereum, $9.2 million from Binance Smart Chain, and $8.5 million from Polygon (formerly Matic). This happened just one week after crypto exchange BitMart was hacked for $200 million which claimed the breach was “mainly caused by a stolen private key that had two of our hot wallets compromised”. It lost assets on Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain tokens.
AscendEX pledged to reimburse its customers who lost assets to the hack. In a series of tweets released back in december 2021 after the hack , the company said “Doing right by our customers is our obligation. Any impacted customers will be 100% reimbursed for their losses. Especially in the cryptocurrency industry, where community is the driving force of innovation, it is important for AscendEX to always remain true to our users”. They continued by saying “We plan to resume withdrawals gradually, beginning with Ethereum. Any user that wishes to withdraw their assets will be permitted to do so in an uninterrupted capacity once withdrawals reopen for the particular coin or token.”
In conclusion, the past year has been filled with series of hacking commited against cryptocurrency and DeFi companies. Cyber criminals stole about $120 million from DeFi platform Badger. Other attacks in 2021 include thefts of more than $600 million from Poly in August and $34 million from Cream Finance in September. In May, about $200 million was stolen from the PancakeBunny platform.
