Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Liquid has reported that hackers have compromised some of its wallets, resulting in the theft of over $90 million.
The company’s operations and technology teams detected unauthorized access to their “warm” wallets, which are online-based, early Thursday. According to Liquid, criminals made off with approximately $91 million in crypto assets, but over $16 million of that was frozen through coordinated efforts from other exchanges and the wider community.
Blockchain analytics firm Elliptic estimates the total losses at $97 million, including $45 million in Ethereum tokens. These tokens are reportedly being converted into Ether via decentralized exchanges, allowing the hacker to evade the freezing of these assets.
In response to the breach, Liquid has urged customers not to make any crypto deposits into their wallets and has temporarily halted all crypto withdrawals. However, fiat withdrawals and deposits are still operational. The company stated, “Liquid will continue to do everything in its power to mitigate the impact from this incident and restore full service as soon as possible.”
This incident marks the second hack of Liquid in less than a year. In November, a malicious actor was able to alter DNS records and gain access to the document storage infrastructure, but no funds were stolen at that time.
Earlier this month, Poly Network experienced a significant hack, with $610 million in crypto stolen, although the majority of the funds were later returned by the hacker in exchange for a bug bounty offer.