According to a spokesperson for Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world has been hit by hackers, a $570 million hack has been discovered on a binance blockchain of the company. This is the latest in a string of hacks that have hit the cryptocurrency industry this year.
In a tweet, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao said that coins had been hacked from a blockchain "bridge" utilized in the BNB Chain, formerly known as the Binance Smart Chain up until February.
Blockchain bridges are instruments for transferring coins between various apps.
According to Zhao's post, the hackers made off with almost $100 million worth of cryptocurrency.
Later, according to a blog post by BNB Chain, the hacker withdrew a total of 2 million BNB coins, valued at about $570 million.
According to the email from the Binance representative, most of the BNB were still in the hacker's digital wallet address, with about $100 million worth remaining "unrecovered."
According to Elliptic, a London-based researcher on the crypto blockchain, the hacker created 2 million new BNB tokens before transferring the majority of the coins to other cryptocurrencies including Tether and USD Coin.
BNB Chain said that it had temporarily stopped using its blockchain before restarting it at at 06:30 GMT.
By getting in touch with the blockchain's "validators," which are organizations or people who confirm blockchain transactions, BNB Chain was "able to halt the problem from spreading," according to a blog post. It added without more explanation that there are 44 validators spread across several time zones working.
