The now-defunct cryptocurrency corporation FTX has experienced a mysterious disappearance of over $600 million in cryptocurrency from its wallets.
Shortly after this incident, FTX disclosed through its official Telegram channel that it had fallen victim to a hack and advised users to remove all FTX apps and avoid installing new updates.
An FTX Support channel chat moderator cautioned, “There has been a breach of FTX. FTX apps contain malware. Remove them. There is a chat window open. The FTX website might download Trojans. Avoid going there.”
Ryne Miller, FTX’s general counsel, shared on Twitter that he was investigating irregularities in wallet movements related to the aggregation of FTX balances across exchanges.
On-chain data reveals that various Ethereum tokens, as well as Solana and Binance Smart Chain tokens, have been transferred from FTX’s official wallets to decentralized exchanges like 1inch. Both FTX and FTX US appear to be impacted.
Simultaneously, FTX officially filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after allegedly losing billions of dollars in user funds. However, the FTX hierarchy has not acknowledged the transfers.
Several wallet owners have reported seeing $0 balances in their FTX US and FTX.com wallets, possibly indicating inaccessibility to the FTX API.
The market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies has plummeted to $841 billion, marking a $201 billion decrease in just seven days. This situation poses a high risk of industry contagion due to the 130 organizations affiliated with the FTX bankruptcy.
Following the refusal to allow customer withdrawals and citing a multi-billion liquidity hole, FTX, one of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchanges, voluntarily filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy with the US. This has left millions of customers’ bitcoin holdings inaccessible with an uncertain recovery timeline.
Many observers fear that matters will worsen as the valuation and regulatory contagion spreads, significantly harming the business’s integrity.
Moreover, speculative discussions within the cryptocurrency community on Twitter suggest either an external attack or potential insider involvement in planning the fund outflows.
