According to the CoinDesk portal, referencing information from the Arkham blockchain analytics platform, the potential financial loss for the Binance crypto exchange due to a possible hacker attack could amount to $5.7 billion.
Specialists consulted by The Wall Street Journal affirmed that the potential losses may surpass $5.5 billion. The incident is being referred to by the media as the biggest hack of any cryptocurrency exchange ever.
As stated by Arkham, the assets that were taken comprised $1.5 billion in Bitcoin, $900 million in Ethereum, and roughly $1.4 billion in stablecoins USDT and USDC. The assailants are currently attempting to extract money from their wallet: specifically, they utilized a portion of the stolen USDT as collateral and secured approximately $44 million in WETH tokens via the decentralized platform Aave.
As per DefiLlama, prior to the attack, Binance possessed around $144 billion in assets on its platform. The funds taken out represent approximately 4% of this total. According to CoinDesk, Binance owns a financial safety mechanism known as the User Safe Asset Fund, enabling it to mitigate at least part of the possible losses.
The company has not directly acknowledged the breach yet, but has mentioned that it is looking into claims of a potential hacking incident. They stated that they are collaborating with law enforcement agencies, issuers, and firms in blockchain analytics and have now frozen $2.54 billion in assets.
source: coindesk.com
