KuCoin’s CEO has revealed that the cryptocurrency exchange has recovered over 80% of the stolen funds in the September hack of its trading platform
Cryptocurrency exchange KuCoin has revealed that it has recovered most of the stolen funds from its September hack. KuCoin CEO Johnny Lyu revealed via a tweet yesterday, stating that the exchange has now recovered 84% or $235 million of the total $280 million stolen by the hackers.
Lyu stated that “Latest updates about #KuCoin Security Incident: So far, 84% of the affected assets have been recovered via approaches like on-chain tracking, contract upgrade and judicial recovery. As asked by the law enforcement, we will publish all the details once the case is closed”.
KuCoin has been updating its clients on the efforts they are making to recover the stolen funds. The exchange is also providing regular updates on the cryptocurrencies that are now available for trading purposes.
Hackers stole over $30 million worth of Bitcoin when they attacked the cryptocurrency exchange in September. Initially, KuCoin thought the hacker stole only $150 million from their hot wallets, but further forensic investigation revealed that the figure was close to $280 million. The hackers stole $147 million worth of numerous ERC-20 tokens and $87 million worth of Stellar Lumens (XLM) during the attack on the 25th of September.
KuCoin has put in a lot of effort to recover the stolen funds. A few days after the hack, Bitfinex froze $13 million USDT on EOS after identifying the funds stolen from KuCoin. This was followed by Tether freezing another $20 million USDT sitting in the hacker’s Ethereum address. KuCoin and other cryptocurrency exchanges’ efforts led to the recovery of $160 million within days via various strategies.
KuCoin would find it impossible to recover all the stolen funds as the hackers managed to cash out tokens worth around $13 million, with the funds laundered via decentralised exchanges.
KuCoin to resume full service of 176 tokens
The recovery of 84% of the stolen funds is an excellent achievement by KuCoin and has allowed the crypto exchange to provide certain services again. Lyu tweeted that KuCoin is offering full service of 176 tokens again. It is planning to re-open the others before the 22nd of November.
Hackers have stolen billions of dollars from cryptocurrency exchanges over the years, with the Coincheck hack of $534 million by far the biggest in crypto history.