Binance Freezes $5.3M Funds Aligning with Investigation on BtcTurk Exploit

• BtcTurk has faced a cyber attack affecting cryptocurrencies stored in the platform’s hot wallets.
• Binance CEO Richard Teng announces that the exchange has frozen $5.3 million in stolen funds.
• ZachXBT points out a possible connection between the BtcTurk exploit and the $54 million Avalanche transfer.

Binance CEO Richard Teng announced the crypto exchange’s alliance with the largest Turkish crypto exchange, BtcTurk, to investigate the latter’s recent exploit. Consequently, Binance froze over $5.3 million in stolen funds.

Binance is assisting BtcTurk with investigations and have frozen over $5.3M in stolen funds so far.

Our investigations & security teams work around the clock as part of our proactive efforts to protect the ecosystem from bad actors. We will provide further updates as relevant. https://t.co/8j6uMgOPm6

— Richard Teng (@_RichardTeng)
June 22, 2024

On June 22, BtcTurk revealed that the platform faced a cyber-attack that affected cryptocurrencies stored in hot wallets. However, the company assured that the majority of assets stored in the cold wallets remain safe and unaffected by the attack.

In a subsequent X post, crypto sleuth ZachXBT hinted at a possible connection between the BtcTurk exploit and the $54 million Avalanche transfer. According to ZachXBT’s post, the address moved 1.96 million AVAX to Coinbase via THORChain. Later, the address withdrew Bitcoins worth more than $46 million from Binance. The suspicious connection between these transactions and the cyber-attack is based on the time around which both incidents occurred.

Just shared on Telegram that this entity withdrew $46M+ worth of BTC from Coinbase/Binance after those AVAX depositshttps://t.co/aONZbESvre

— ZachXBT (@zachxbt)
June 22, 2024

Binance CEO’s post shed light on the exchange’s cooperation with the ongoing investigation surrounding the hack and the stolen fund. Teng wrote,

“Our investigations & security teams work around the clock as part of our proactive efforts to protect the ecosystem from bad actors. We will provide further updates as relevant.”

BtcTurk declared that the platform’s crypto deposit and withdrawal services would resume with the progression of the cyber security team’s activities. The platform added that the financial strength of BtcTurk is quite above the lost funds and that the attack would not impact the user assets. As per BtcTurk’s official announcement, the attack affects the deposits of crypto assets including BTC, AAVE, ALGO, ANKR, ADA, AVX, APE, AXS, LINK, ATOM, FIL, and more.

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