Binance Prevents Losses By Freezing The Stolen Funds By Cryptopia Hacker

In the latest crypto news, we are focusing on a smart move done by the Binance team recently, with which the leading exchange managed to freeze some of the funds that were stolen from the crypto exchange Cryptopia during the high-profile hack which occurred earlier this week.

The CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao, has announced this news in a tweet on Wednesday, saying the following:

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 maneuver for them. https://t.co/i0PeahLzic

— CZ Binance 🔶🔶🔶 (@cz_binance) January 16, 2019

Zhao also questioned why do attackers keep on sending the stolen funds to Binance, mostly because the word spreads quickly and the crypto exchanges are not shy about halting the flow of stolen funds.

As Cryptopia tweeted, on the other hand, the breach occurred on Monday and caused the exchange to suffer from “significant losses.”

In numbers, this translates to at least $2.4 million worth of Ethereum (ETH) moved to several unknown wallets – as well as about $1.2 million worth of Centrality (CENNZ). Even though it is still unclear who is behind the hack, some people believe that Cryptopia may have made the transfers for security reasons.

The exchange commented:

We cannot comment as this matter is now in the hands of the appropriate authorities. We will update you as soon as we can.https://t.co/9uMiKQwb6u

— Cryptopia Exchange (@Cryptopia_NZ) January 15, 2019

What’s most interesting in the case is that one day before this hack, Zhao posted a message on Twitter where he advised crypto holders to store their holdings on exchanges instead of personal storage devices such as USB drives or hardware wallets.

The tweet was not that well received by the audience, giving Zhao comments about the risk of storing cryptocurrency on “reputable” exchanges like Binance.