Poloniex Crypto Exchange Hacked, Assets Worth IDR 1.9 Trillion Lost, Justin Sun Promises Compensation

Poloniex's crypto exchange was hacked by hackers. (Photo; Doc. CryptoSaurus)

JAKARTA - The Poloniex crypto exchange experienced a massive hacking incident, resulting in funds of around $125 million stolen from the platform wallet. The hack comes just months after the HTX crypto exchange, which is also owned by Tron founder Justin Sun, lost about $8 million in Ether.

Reporting from CryptoBriefing, Poloniex's hack was first revealed by PeckShild, a blockchain analytics firm, which reported that hackers managed to drain about $56 million in the form of ETH, USD 48 million (IDR 750 billion) in the form of TRON (TRX), and USD 18 million (IDR 281 billion) in Bitcoin.

According to a CoinDesk report, the hacks suspected by blockchain security firms PeckShild and Cyvers occurred at 10:55 UTC. Poloniex announced 12 minutes later that the stock exchange wallet had been deactivated for maintenance. The hack was later confirmed by Poloniex investor Justin Sun, in a tweet.

Not long after PeckShild's report, Poloniex announced via Twitter that they had "deactivated the wallet for maintenance." However, Justin Sun, who acquired Poloniex in 2019, confirmed the hack in a tweet, saying that the exchange would "completely compensate" the affected users.

Sun also offered a 5% reward to white hat hackers if he returned the stolen funds. In addition, Sun said that he was exploring opportunities to collaborate with other exchanges to facilitate the recovery of these funds.

Arkham data shows that Poloniex hackers bought 20 million US dollars (IDR 312 billion) TRX after the hack, pushing token prices up more than 20%. Even so, hackers seem to be taking care of it, because they accidentally sent a 2.5 million US dollar Golem token (IDR 39 billion) directly to the smart contract token address and lost access to the fund.

This is the second security incident that has hit Sun's stock exchange in recent months. In September, the HTX crypto exchange (previously Huobi) lost about $8 million in Ether form due to hackers. A few weeks later, hackers returned stolen funds and white hat hackers received a bonus of 250 ETH (Rp 3.9 billion).