The Great Escape from the BitMart Hack

We’re sure you will have heard of the BitMart Hack which took place and if you have read our recent post, you will know this is the reason for the early migration over to v2. Here we are giving a full rundown of exactly what happened during the BitMart hack, what took place and how CEO Ryan came in to save the day!

The BitMart Hack – What Happened?

BitMart confirmed a hack on December 4th, 2021, in an official statement saying the following:

“We have identified a large-scale security breach related to one of our ETH hot wallets and one of our BSC hot wallets on December 4th, 2021. At this moment we are still concluding the possible methods used.”

Hackers were able to withdraw assets of the value in excess of 200 million USD.

This specific security breach targeted the ETH and BSC hot wallets which BitMart reassured users only carried a small percentage of assets held on BitMart, all other wallets were secure and unharmed.

Ryan was made aware of the hack through various Telegram and Discord groups. The GMR team then kept a close watch on the wallet, noticing that one of the hacked wallets had close to 1million dollars worth of GMR! This obviously caused panic amongst the GMR team as they watched the hackers begin dumping other tokens and coins within the wallet. Throughout the day the team kept a close eye on the wallet and soon realised the hacker had approved GMR for sale. Ryan and the team now knew it was time to begin migration. Although ready-ish, certain tests had not yet been completed but GMR knew this was the right decision. The team then initiated migration and began selling the developer tokens.

Migration to V2

Although this occurred in the most hectic way possible – migration Is complete! Not as it should have happened, but it is done. For the community this caused confusion and what can only be describe as chaos for several hours. Since this had to be done so quickly the team had little time to communicate the process and explain what was happening. The decision, however, has meant GMR were able to protect the community from damage that could have derailed the v2 migration. I think it is fair to say this was a great escape!

You can catch the AMA with CEO Ryan over on the GMR YouTube channel, where he further explains just how crazy the BitMart hack was and what early migration means for the community.