Over $150M Drained in KuCoin Crypto Exchange Hack

The Singapore-headquartered digital asset exchange KuCoin said in a statement it detected large withdrawals of bitcoin and ethereum tokens to an unknown wallet beginning at 19:05 UTC on Friday.

In a live stream on 4:30 UTC Saturday, KuCoin CEO Johnny Lyu said one or more hackers obtained the private keys to the exchange's hot wallets.

KuCoin transferred what was left in them to new hot wallets, abandoned the old ones and froze customer deposits and withdrawals, Lyu said.

Cold cryptocurrency wallets are not connected to the Internet and are considered more secure than hot cryptocurrency wallets.

In an updated statement on its website, KuCoin released a list of BTC, bitcoin sv, ETH, litecoin, XRP, Stellar lumens, tron and tether wallet addresses where the stolen funds were transferred.

Two Ethereum wallets belonging to KuCoin have sent more than 11,480 ETH, which currently trades at a price of about $350, to the Ethereum wallet address associated with the hack, according to data from blockchain explorer Etherscan.

The Ethereum wallet address has also received over 150 Ethereum-based tokens worth more than $150 million from the two KuCoin Ethereum wallets, Etherscan's data shows.

Over 200 cryptocurrency assets trade on KuCoin with a combined daily average volume of around $100 million, ranking it as one of the busiest trading exchanges, according to the cryptocurrency data site CoinGecko.

KuCoin is investigating the hack with international law enforcement and stolen customer money will be "Covered completely" by an insurance fund, Lyu said.

UPDATE: Addresses and balances for cryptocurrency wallets associated with KuCoin's hack have been added.