NEW YORK (Dispatches) -
Hackers have taken $196 million from crypto trading platform Bitmart, a security firm said.
Bitmart confirmed the hack in an official statement, calling it “a large-scale security breach” and writing that hackers withdrew about $150 million in assets. However, blockchain security and data analytics firm Peckshield estimates that the loss is closer to $200 million.
Bitmart added in a statement that all withdrawals had been temporarily suspended until further notice and said a thorough security review was underway.
Peckshield was the first to notice the breach on Saturday, noting that one of Bitmart’s addresses showed a steady outflow of tens of millions of dollars to an address which Etherscan referred to as the “Bitmart Hacker.”
Peckshield estimated that Bitmart lost around $100 million in various cryptocurrencies on the ethereum blockchain and another $96 million from coins on the binance smart chain. The hackers made off with a mix of more than 20 tokens, including binance coin, safemoon, and shiba inu.

Bitcoin Bruising Continues

On Monday, Bitcoin continued its slide, losing close to 5 percent after a brutal weekend that at one point saw the world’s most popular cryptocurrency lose more than a fifth of its value.
The selloff sent Bitcoin’s price and the amount invested in Bitcoin futures back to where they were in early October, before a massive price surge that sent the token to an all-time high of $69,000 on November 10.
It was last down 3.9 percent at $47,567.
Traders said the weekend fall was connected to a broad move away from riskier assets in traditional markets that was sparked by worries about the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, combined with lower trading liquidity that can exaggerate market moves and tends to plague cryptocurrencies at weekends.