FTX Employees Rumored To Be Behind $600M Potential Hack

FTX and FTX US wallets have been impacted in a potential hack recording over $600 million in tokens transferred by the exploiter. FTX US General Counsel Ryne Miller earlier tweeted the wallet movements as “abnormal” and the facts and reasons were unclear to him or the FTX team.

In the following tweet, Ryne Miller claimed the FTX team hurried precautionary measures to move all digital assets to cold storage after recording some unauthorized transactions. Some believe former FTX developer Samuel Hyde is behind the hack.

Former FTX Employees Behind the Hack

On-chain experts observed millions in outflow from FTX and FTX US wallets, suspected to be the start of the bankruptcy process. However, FTX employees confirmed to ZachXBT that they don’t recognize these withdrawals. Moreover, FTX Community Chat admin dropped a message in the Telegram group saying that FTX has been hacked and FTX apps are malware. The admin also urged users to delete the app and warned of possible Trojans on the FTX website.

FTX US general counsel Ryne Miller in a tweet claimed that unauthorized transactions observed by FTX led the team to expedite transfers from wallets. He pointed out that FTX US and FTX.com are required to move all digital assets to cold storage as a precautionary measure as part of the Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings.

“Following the Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings – FTX US and FTX [dot] com initiated precautionary steps to move all digital assets to cold storage. Process was expedited this evening – to mitigate damage upon observing unauthorized transactions.”

Defi and NFT project founder Foobar claimed FTX counsel noticed the black hat exploiters withdrawing tokens and swapping to ETH and DAI. Thereafter, he took white hat actions to save some funds from unauthorized transactions. Moreover, ZachXBT estimates the black hat transfers at nearly 450 million and white hat rescue from multisig at nearly 200 million so far.

Meanwhile, some claims FTX employees are behind the exploit, especially former FTX developer Samuel Hyde. While the motive is unclear, but the action may have been due to a conflict with the top leadership earlier this year.

Tether Blacklists USDT Related to Hacker

Several on-chain data revealed that the exploiter was converting stablecoins to DAI and other crypto assets to Ethereum. As a result, stablecoin issuer Tether blacklisted $3.9 million USDT on Avalanche (AVAX) and $27.5 million USDT on Solana (SOL) of the FTX attacker, reported on-chain sleuth ZachXBT.

FTX Token (FTT) price fell to a low of $2.05 today. In the last 24 hours, the price has plunged over 35% and 90% in a week. The crypto market further slides over 3% amid the pressure due to the FTX crisis.

Read more: Over $1 Billion In Customer Funds Missing At FTX