Upbit, the biggest crypto exchange in South Korea, has been hit by a major hack. The attack forced the company to stop all deposits and withdrawals. This happened right after Upbit’s parent company finished its merger with Naver, one of the biggest tech companies in the country.
The CEO of Dunamu, Kyungseok, said the company found an unauthorized transfer of around thirty seven million dollars. The stolen funds were moved on the Solana network. Solana is one of the busiest chains used by exchanges. Some of the tokens involved in the hack included Double Zero, Access Protocol, Magic Eden, and Jupiter.
As soon as the team noticed the exploit, they reacted quickly. They moved the affected tokens into cold wallets. They also tried to freeze the stolen tokens on the blockchain. After that, Upbit paused all withdrawals and deposits so they could fully investigate the situation.
Upbit said customers who lost funds will be compensated. The CEO added that the company will keep focusing on protecting customer assets and will continue strengthening its security systems.
This hack came only one day after Dunamu completed a merger with a Naver unit. Naver is a massive tech company that owns services like a search engine, a news site, an online shopping platform, and LINE, a very popular messaging app in South Korea. Naver now aims to list Upbit in the United States. The exchange could join other public crypto platforms like Bullish, Gemini, and Coinbase. The recent deal valued Upbit at more than ten billion dollars.
Upbit has become one of the biggest exchanges in the world. Data from CoinMarketCap shows that it handled almost two billion dollars in trading volume in just twenty four hours. But its planned listing comes at a challenging time. Most public crypto exchange stocks are struggling. Coinbase has dropped more than forty percent from its yearly high. Bullish and Gemini are also trading near their lowest levels.
Even though the stolen funds from Upbit are huge, they are still small when compared to some past hacks. WazirX in India lost three hundred twenty five million dollars last year and never recovered. BingX lost fifty million dollars. Bybit saw a shocking one point five billion dollar hack earlier this year when hackers broke into its cold wallet system. That attack was linked to the Lazarus Group from North Korea. Coinbase also suffered an incident that cost between one hundred eighty million and four hundred million dollars in fixes.
Upbit now faces the tough job of rebuilding trust while also preparing for its potential United States listing.
