$31 million worth of Tether stolen in latest crypto heist
Crypto hackers are at it again.
According to Tether, a company that's behind the cryptocurrency of the same name (known by the symbol USDT), someone recently stole nearly $31 million from its digital vault.
The announcement, together with Tether's website, is currently offline, but an archived version says that "$30,950,010 USDT was removed from the Tether Treasury wallet on November 19, 2017 and sent to an unauthorized bitcoin address."
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Tether is a widely-used cryptocurrency whose value is pegged to the U.S. dollar at a 1:1 ratio. It's most commonly used as a way to own and move USD without actually turning crypto assets dollars.
Tether says it will not try to retrieve the money. Instead, the company will attempt to permanently freeze the stolen funds by updating its Omni Core software. Several cryptocurrency exchanges, including Kraken and Bittrex, made announcements regarding the issue, with some pausing USDT funding until the Omni Core upgrade is complete.
Nothing is as it seems in the world of crypto, and there are already whispers that this is more than a simple theft. Tether is said to be related -- owned, even -- by one of the largest crypto exchanges out there, Bitfinex, and there's talk of the two companies engaging in dishonest activities. On Nov. 19, Bitfinex issued a statement on Twitter, saying that the exchange is "solvent and both fiat and crypto withdrawals are functioning as normal" and pegging the recent rumors to a "co-ordinated attack to create a market disrupting event." A full announcement, Bitfinex said, is forthcoming.
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Bitfinex itself was hacked in August 2016, with hackers making away with about $65 million worth of Bitcoin. And it's just one of many such incidents in the crypto space; just weeks ago, a bug in the Parity wallet software, triggered by a careless developer or malicious hacker, froze more than $150 million worth of Ethereum.
The price of Bitcoin dipped to about $7800 following the news on Monday, but quickly recovered and is currently at $8,180.
Disclosure: The author of this text owns, or has recently owned, a number of cryptocurrencies, including BTC and ETH.
Topics Bitcoin Cybersecurity
Stan is a Senior Editor at Mashable, where he has worked since 2007. He's got more battery-powered gadgets and band t-shirts than you. He writes about the next groundbreaking thing. Typically, this is a phone, a coin, or a car. His ultimate goal is to know something about everything.
