FTX said it is investigating abnormalities with wallet movements.
Photo:
DADO RUVIC/REUTERS
Bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX is probing a potential hack and asked customers to stay off the FTX website, the company said. More than $400 million worth of crypto funds appears to be missing, according to crypto analytics firm Elliptic Enterprises Ltd.
The potential hack occurred Friday after FTX filed for bankruptcy. Ryne Miller, FTX US’s general counsel, said in a Saturday tweet that FTX and FTX US had started moving all digital assets to cold storage—crypto wallets that aren’t connected to the internet—after the bankruptcy filing.
FTX is “investigating abnormalities with wallet movements related to the consolidation of FTX balances across exchanges,” Mr. Miller said on Twitter. He called the movements unauthorized transactions and said the facts are still unclear. FTX will “share more info as soon as we have it,” he said.
A post in the exchange’s official Telegram channel called the fund flows a hack.
Approximately $473 million in crypto assets appeared to be taken from FTX without permission, according to
Tom Robinson,
co-founder of Elliptic. The tokens were quickly converted to ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency, on so-called decentralized exchanges.
Such platforms process transactions automatically, making them popular among hackers to prevent funds from being seized, he said.
—Caitlin Ostroff contributed to this article.
Write to Elaine Yu at elaine.yu@wsj.com and Vicky Ge Huang at vicky.huang@wsj.com
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