Changpeng Zhao and Justin Sun’s Joint Operation Recovers 7.9M Stolen Funds with a 5% Bounty

Just a week after the name change of Huobi to HTX, HTX fell victim to an $8 million hack, raising concerns about cryptocurrency security. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, also known as CZ, promptly offered Binance’s security team to aid the investigation. The breach was detected early, and hackers had less time to act. The attack, detected by blockchain analytics platform Cyvers, targeted one of HTX’s hot wallets, resulting in the loss of 5,000 Ether. Even though the sum is low, it could have been injected into the sensitive account info.

Justin Sun’s 5% Bounty, A New Way to Mitigate the Risk?

HTX’s unusual deal is the talk of the town as they offered the hacker a “white-hat reward” equal to 5% of the siphoned funds, approx $400,000, as a gesture of goodwill. However, it came with a 7-day ticker for compliance, and they must return the 95%. In a message directed at the attacker in Chinese, HTX stated,

“We have confirmed your true identity. Please return funds to 0x18709E89BD403F470088aBDAcEbE86CC60dda12e. If you do not return the funds by the deadline, we will request judicial intervention.” 

HTX’s Response to the Hack

Justin Sun, Tron founder and an adviser to HTX, told users that the exchange will cover all losses. He noted that HTX’s $8 million loss is tiny compared to its users’ $3 billion assets, equaling two weeks’ revenue. HTX added real-time monitoring to prevent future losses after the incident. Even after the tragedy, Justin Sun said he invested little in HTX. He agreed to livestream in English and Chinese to discuss exchange security with the community.

Moreover, as investigations into the HTX hack continue, Binance has faced security challenges and has yet to respond to this. There is no doubt that risk assets are under threat of such scams and fraud.

But not everyone is Lucky!

Mixin Network, a decentralized platform, lost around $200 million due to a breach in a third-party cloud service provider’s database just before the HTX hack. An investigation revealed the hacker’s previous association with Mixin. The platform plans to resume normal operations once vulnerabilities are fixed, but recovery plans for the lost assets remain undisclosed.

Huobi to HTX, Sun Has Bigger Plan for Tron

In a separate move, TRON founder Justin Sun introduced a crypto investment project called Staked Tether (stUSDT), which has already attracted over $1.8 billion in investments in under three months. However, there is a growing concern that this project could threaten Huobi Global as the exclusive gateway to stUSDT investment is through the Huobi platform, potentially exposing the exchange to large fund outflows.