DeFiance Capital’s Founder Hacked For $1.6M

In a recently reported hacking attack, an unknown individual targeted the online cryptocurrency wallet owned by the founder of a major crypto investment firm, DeFiance Capital. The founder, known as Arthur_0x, confirmed that his wallet was hit and that the attacker managed to steal $1.6 million worth of cryptocurrencies and Azuki NFTs.

Hacking attacks are still very common in the crypto industry, although they are most commonly conducted against exchanges and companies. Targeting a personal wallet of a specific individual, especially one that runs a major investment firm like DeFiance Capital is something that stands out from the norm.

Following the announcement of the attack, the crypto community became united in its support of Arthur. Many started looking into the attack in an effort to retrieve the stolen funds and assets. Arthur himself started asking people to blacklist the hacker’s wallet, and while some have been attempting to unmask the attacker, others have been trying to learn how they got access to Arthur’s wallet.

The activity attracted the attention of Cirrus, a known $NFT community member who even bought two Azuki NFTs that belonged to Arthur. Upon purchasing them, Cirrus tweeted that he’s willing to get the NFTs back to their original owner “at cost.”

Cirrus commented that this is not the first time he found himself in this situation, and while he could easily sell the NFTs and get 6-8 $ETH for them, he believes that doing so wouldn’t be right. As someone who has been a victim of rug pulls three times in his years of working with crypto, Cirrus is now well aware of what it feels like to be robbed, and so he is willing to do whatever he can to help the victim.

However, the two stolen Azuki pieces are only a small portion of the total haul, as Arthur apparently lost 78 different NFTs belonging to five collections. Most of the stolen non-fungible tokens were Azuki, but there were also 68 wrapped Ethereum coins, 1,578 LooksRare tokens, and 4,349 staked DYDX tokens.

The hacker did not waste any time, and as soon as they robbed the wallet, the NFTs emerged on OpenSea. At one point, the hacker’s wallet held a total of $1.6 million, or 545 $ETH.

The hack shows that the crypto industry is still far from being safe and that anyone can be hit by a similar attack, even experts who have been in the crypto business for a long time. In Arthur’s case, he says that for the most part, he used a hardware wallet to ensure that his coins and tokens would always be out of reach. However, since he started getting more involved with $NFT trading, he began relying on hot wallets, which eventually led to someone managing to break into one of them.

Despite everything, however, Arthur is still a crypto expert and a rather influential individual in the industry, and he does not plan to just silently accept this loss. He posted a tweet sending a message to the hacker, saying that they “messed with the wrong person.”