- Wintermute’s CEO discloses that the firm lost $160 million in a recent hack.
- The CEO of Wintermute, Evgeny Gaevoy, said the company stays solvent.
- The firm still considers the breach a “white hat” event and has contacted the hacker.
In a tweet, Wintermute CEO and founder, Evgeny Gaevoy, disclosed that the company had lost $160 million in a hack related to their decentralized finance (DeFi) operation. The news comes just days after the liquidity provider became the official market maker for TRX and a strategic partner of the entire TRON ecosystem.
We’ve been hacked for about $160M in our defi operations. Cefi and OTC operations are not affected
— wishful cynic (@EvgenyGaevoy) September 20, 2022
While there has been no impact on the company’s lending or OTC services, CEO Evgeny Gaevoy said that the company remains solvent with “twice over” $160 million remaining in equity.
However, the hack is being considered a “white hat” event, according to Gaevoy. The company has reportedly reached out to the hacker for more information. Meanwhile, on-chain investigator ZachXBT has located the hacker’s wallet, which contains roughly $9 million in ether (ETH) and $38 million in other ERC-20 tokens.
Since its inception in 2017, Wintermute has become a major provider of liquidity in the global cryptocurrency market, with daily trading volume exceeding billions of dollars. However, the recent event wasn’t the only mishap for the firm this year.
Back in June, the firm misplaced $15 million worth of funds from the Ethereum scaling tool Optimism after the market maker provided Optimism’s team with a wrong blockchain address. This resulted in the funds ending in the hands of an attacker.
Hackers have recently struck a number of cryptocurrency firms, with Wintermute being the latest to fall prey. Almost $200 million was stolen from the Nomad crypto bridge in August, just before $570,000 was taken from the Curve Finance cryptocurrency exchange using the DeFi protocol.
According to research conducted by Certik, a blockchain security firm, over $1.3 billion was lost to DeFi breaches in 2021.
Disclaimer: The information presented in this article is for informational and educational purposes only. The article does not constitute financial advice or advice of any kind. Coin Edition is not responsible for any losses incurred as a result of the utilization of content, products, or services mentioned. Readers are advised to exercise caution before taking any action related to the company.
