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Bitman sues unknown hacker who allegedly stole $5.5 million worth of crypto by using Binance and Bittrex wallets for manipulation of MANA token.
China-based Bitcoin (BTC) mining giant Bitmain has sued an anonymous hacker for the alleged theft of cryptocurrency worth $5.5 million from Bitmainâs account on Binance in April, according to a lawsuit filed with the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington at Seattle on Nov. 7.
As stated in the court document, an unknown hacker, referred to as âJohn Doeâ in the case, managed to take over Bitmainâs Binance account and used stored Bitcoin to manipulate the price of altcoin Decentraland (MANA) and then steal the profits.
Bitmain says in the court document that the amount of the companyâs losses âexceedsâ $5.5 million in âBitcoin and other digital assets,â and specifying that the defendant was able to steal âapproximately 617 BTC.â The document cites that the unauthorized action took place on April 22, when Bitcoin was trading at around $8,935.
The document also explains that as a part of the âscam,â the unknown hacker used two of their own accounts on now-second largest crypto exchange Binance, as well as on Bittrex, with around 2.3 million MANA already acquired on Bittrex. âJohn Doeâ reportedly placed purchase orders from Bitmainâs digital wallet offering to buy MANA âand other digital assetsâ with Bitmainâs bitcoins at a price that was âfar above the going market rate.â The defendant also allegedly further artificially inflated MANAâs price by using Bitmainâs BTC to buy Ethereum (ETH), which was then used to buy MANA.
According to the lawsuit, the hacker further carried out a number of orchestrated trades in the reverse direction between BTC and MANA from Bitmainâs wallet and their own, eventually reportedly completing the theft by transferring BTC from their Bitmain account âultimately into a digital wallet on the Bittrex cryptocurrency trading platform.â
In Mid-October, Cointelegraph reported that losses caused by hacks of crypto exchanges in the first nine months of 2018 have exceeded the numbers for the whole year of 2017 by 250 percent, with $927 million stolen.
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