Crypto Market Maker Wintermute Lost $160 Million to Hackers

Wintermute, a cryptocurrency market maker, has become the latest victim of hackers as $160 million worth of digital currencies were siphoned from its decentralized finance (DeFi) operations.

The Founder and CEO, Evgeny Gaevoy confirmed the hack with a tweet and revealed that its lending and over-the-counter (OTC) services were not affected.

We’ve been hacked for about $160M in our defi operations. Cefi and OTC operations are not affected.

Additionally, Gaevoy highlighted that the company is “solvent with twice over” $160 million in “equity left.”

“If you have a MM agreement with Wintermute, your funds are safe. There will be a disruption in our services today and potentially for next few days and will get back to normal after,” he added.

“If you are a lender to Wintermute, again, we are solvent, but if you feel safer to recall the loan, we can absolutely do that.”

On top of that, the crypto startup is considering the cyberattack as a white hat incident and urged the attacker to get in touch.

A Major Crypto Market Maker

Wintermute was founded in 2017 and primarily operates as a cryptocurrency market maker, providing liquidity across various markets. It was officially selected by the Tron network as the official DeFi market maker.

According to Etherscan, more than 70 different digital currencies were transferred to the Wintermute exploiter’s wallet. More than $61 million in USDC tokens were siphoned off, followed by $29.4 million in Ether and roughly $13 million in Wrapped Bitcoin.

DeFi is often touted as the real challenger to the centralized banking system. However, the technology remains too vulnerable. According to the estimation of the blockchain security firm, Certik, more than $1.3 billion in cryptocurrencies were stolen in DeFi hacks last year.

This year too, hackers have managed to siphon off hundreds of millions of dollars from DeFi platforms. Crypto bridge Nomad lost around $200 million in August to hackers followed by the $570,000 hack of DeFi protocol Curve Finance.