The sudden collapse of the cryptocurrency market has left many traders reeling from heavy losses, and the perpetrators behind a high-profile hacking incident are no exception to the turmoil.
In early October 2022, the cross-chain bridge of the BNB Chain network was temporarily halted due to a hacker attack that resulted in the theft of 2 million BNB tokens, amounting to approximately $568 million.
More recently, on August 18th, a cryptocurrency wallet linked to the attack on the Venus Protocol was liquidated, resulting in a loss of $53 million. Prior to the liquidation, the attacker had seemingly utilized the stolen funds as collateral for a $30 million USDT loan on the protocol. As the value adjusted down to $27,700 USD on August 17th, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, further plummeted to $25,166 USD on the Binance exchange, marking a staggering 12.6% drop within a 24-hour period.
Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, also experienced a decline, falling from around $1,820 per token on August 17th to approximately $1,597 the following day.
The catalyst for this market downturn appears to be an article published by The Wall Street Journal, alleging that SpaceX, the space transportation giant led by entrepreneur Elon Musk, has sold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin.
According to The Wall Street Journal report, SpaceX has reportedly sold off $373 million USD worth of Bitcoin throughout the years 2022 and 2021. This information was extracted from SpaceX’s private financial documents, which were compiled by WSJ.
However, the article falls short of providing detailed information regarding the specific timing of the transactions and the amount of BTC that SpaceX may currently hold.
The news of such a significant sell-off by a prominent company like SpaceX has undoubtedly contributed to the instability and downward spiral in the cryptocurrency market. Investors and traders are left grappling with uncertainty as they attempt to decipher the broader implications of these events.
Read more:
- Curve Finance Offers $1.85 Million Bounty To Unmask Attacker Of DeFi Stable Pool
- Curve Finance Hacker Returns All Stolen Funds To Alchemix
- Hacker Wintermute Controls Over 51% Liquidity In Curve’s 3pool