Binance, the largest exchange for cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, has been hacked. That makes the platform Friday familiar. It is estimated that about 100 million dollars (102 million euros) worth of crypto coins have been stolen, says CEO Changpeng Zhao. All transactions on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) blockchain were paused during the night from Thursday to Friday due to the hack, but the problem is now under control, according to Zhao.
The hackers managed to steal a total of about two million BNB tokens, at the current price those tokens are worth about 568 million dollars (about 580 million euros). A Binance spokesperson tells the American broadcaster CNBC that about $100 million of this amount has already been cashed in by the hackers, but the rest of the coins are still in the hackers’ crypto wallet. Binance is trying to freeze this remaining cryptocurrency so that the hackers cannot convert it into cash. About 7 million dollars has already been frozen. on the internet forum reddit Zhao shares updates and technical details about the hack and its impact on customers.
Binance was founded in 2017 by Chinese Changpeng Zhao. The company has some self-operating departments and no official headquarters. However, Binance is registered in the Cayman Islands, a well-known tax haven. This summer, the crypto exchange was fined more than 3.3 million euros by De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) for not registering with the DNB after a previous warning.
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