It’s Wednesday, time for your obligatory, weekly crypto hack story.
This time it’s cryptocurrency options exchange Deribit, the largest of its kind, that enters the long, long list of hacked crypto companies. According to Deribit’s official Twitter account, one of the company’s hot wallets was hacked to the tune of $28 million on Tuesday, November 1.
In crypto lingo, « hot wallet » refers to a cryptocurrency wallet that’s frequently used and is typically not protected as strongly as cold wallets, which should ideally hold the bulk of the company’s (and its users’) funds and reserves.
According to Deribit, neither client assets nor its cold wallets were affected. « It’s company procedure to keep 99% of our user funds in cold storage to limit the impact of these type of events, » said Deribit in a tweet.
Deribit temporarily halted deposits and withdrawals; deposits already sent will be processed, though it might take a little longer, the company said.
The loss will be covered by the company reserves, and ongoing operations will not be impacted, Deribit said.
Notably, Deribit’s official blog is not available at writing time, displaying only a « critical error » message.
Deribit is the largest cryptocurrency options exchange by market share according to Coinglass. It hasn’t been on the bad end of major hacks so far, but now it joins the likes of Binance, Bitfinex, and Coinbase (to name a few), all of which have suffered major hacks in the past. Hacking attempts (many of them successful) appear to be on the rise in recent months, with more than $2 billion stolen so far in 2022.
