Binance CEO vows to ‘freeze funds’ sent to exchange from Cryptopia hack

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao has pledged to “freeze funds” sent to the exchange from the wallet associated with the Cryptopia hack.

New Zealand-based Cryptopia suffered a malicious hack earlier this week, with more than $11 million being siphoned out of the exchange from hot wallets.

They said in a statement: “The Cryptopia Exchange suffered a breach which resulted in significant losses. Once identified by staff, the exchange was put into maintenance while we assessed damages.”

Some of the funds were eventually sent to Binance, prompting Changpeng Zhao to write: “Just checked, we were able to freeze some of the funds. I don’t understand why the hackers keep sending to Binance. Social media will be pretty fast to report it, and we will freeze it. It’s a high risk manoeuvre for them. And a lot of work for us, which we wish to avoid, but we will do so diligently, to protect users.”

The wallet that was the beneficiary of the stolen funds, as seen here on Etherscan, had more than $11 million worth of tokens after the hack. In the days following, the figure has fallen to $9.3 million, meaning that over $2.5 million has been transferred elsewhere.

Cryptopia is the latest in a long line of exchanges to suffer malicious attacks over the past few years. Mt Gox infamously got hacked in 2014, losing $357 million. Japanese exchange CoinCheck also fell victim to hackers in early 2018, making a loss of $496 million.

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