Hacked crypto exchange Liquid secures $120M loan from FTX

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While the funds stolen in last week’s cyberattack on Liquid are yet to be returned, the Japanese exchange has secured a US$120 million loan from fellow exchange FTX to cover losses.

Fast facts

• Sam Bankman-Fried, the billionaire CEO of Hong-Kong based FTX, took to Twitter to make the announcement, saying he had always admired Liquid’s attempts at regulatory compliance. “For us, and for the Liquid team … and everyone else — the customers always come first. Which is why the first priority for them and for us was to make sure that everyone was going to be protected.”

• Shortly after the announcement, Liquid updated its blog to assure users there would be no impact on any user’s balances as a result of the attack. Yesterday’s post was the seventh update on the blog, which has been tracking the company’s progress in dealing with the attack.

• Liquid lost more than US$90 million dollars in last week’s attack, which siphoned Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tron and XRP tokens from the exchange. After reporting the hack, Liquid suspended all trading on the account and asked users to halt transfers to their accounts.

• According to public blockchain information on Etherscan, those responsible for the attack have been attempting to hide their tracks by using non-custodial mixer Tornadocash.com, which mixes their Ether and ERC20 tokens in with those of other users. The hackers also used the decentralized exchange Uniswap, among others, to further liquidate ERC20 tokens. Currently, just over 9 ETH, worth just under US$30,000, remain in the wallet.

• Bankman-Fried sat for an exclusive interview with Forkast.News recently where he discussed — among other things — the prospect of FTX going public. “We’d be crazy not to be doing due diligence on it. We don’t have concrete plans there, but we’re learning what we can and doing our homework … [But] we don’t need to access public markets. We don’t need to get more capital. We can keep doing what we’re doing, and we keep trying to grow — we’re getting more capital just from the business.”

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