Bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX is probing a potential hack and asked customers to stay off the FTX website, the company said. More than $370 million worth of crypto funds appears to be missing, according to crypto analytics firm Elliptic Enterprises Ltd.

A rival crypto exchange said Saturday it knew the identity of the alleged hacker and would help authorities in their investigation. 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. “An active fact review and mitigation exercise was initiated immediately in response,” said John Ray, chief restructuring officer and chief executive of FTX.

“We have been in contact with, and are coordinating with law enforcement and relevant regulators. ” Approximately $371 million in crypto assets appeared to be taken from FTX without permission, according to Tom Robinson, co-founder of Elliptic. More than $220 million of the tokens were quickly converted to the stablecoin dai or 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. Another $186 million was also moved out of FTX’s accounts. Mr.

Robinson said those assets were likely moved by FTX itself into secure storage after the bankruptcy filing. Elliptic previously estimated that more than $500 million had been stolen in the hack. The analytics firm updated the figures after receiving new information about which transactions were authorized and which fund movements were part of the bankruptcy proceedings, according to Mr.

Robinson. Crypto exchange Kraken said it has been able to identify the user of the account associated with the unauthorized withdrawals from FTX. .

By Vicky Ge Huang and Elaine Yu on 2022-11-13 16:40:00
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