The Crypto market, known for its unpredictable nature, recently took another sharp downturn, shaking the foundation of many traders and speculators. This latest wave of liquidations, however, seemed to have swept up not just regular players but also an entity behind one of last year’s most significant crypto heists.
The Great Heist And The Liquidation Trail
A Bloomberg report, citing data from PeckShield, revealed that a crypto wallet that had ties to a roughly $600 million BNB theft last October, faced a liquidation of digital assets amounting to $63 million on the crypto lending platform, Venus Protocol.
The analysis from PeckShield illustrated that the hacker collateralized the stolen crypto to obtain a loan. Particularly, by offering the pilfered BNB as security, the bad actor procured a $30 million loan in USDT stablecoin.
According to PeckShield, the hacker was able to siphon this large amount of BNB by exploiting a substantial breach involving the BSC Token Hub, a cross-chain bridge. Despite the considerable intrigue the hack generated, the identity of the malefactor or group responsible is still in the shadows.
Data from Peckshield on how the hacker got liquidated is quite interesting. The hacker met its karma when the crypto market suffered a total liquidations of $1 billion, over the past 24 hours. According to PeckShield, the hacker was caught up in this large liquidation due to decentralized finance protocols, like Venus, operating on “smart contracts.”
The blockchain forensics firm said that as the value of BNB dipped below the $220 mark, automatic liquidation of three collateral positions associated with the ill-famed wallet was initiated.
It is worth noting that at a specific point on Friday, BNB was trading at a price below that mark. Particularly, the asset currently trades at $218, at the time of writing.
Further insights provided by PeckShield revealed the enormity of the hacker’s operations on Venus Protocol. The culprit had borrowed $147.5 million, using stablecoins like USDT, USDC, and BUSD. To secure this, the hacker deposited 900,000 BNB, obtained from the October breach, which had an estimated worth of $196.7 million at the time of writing.
Crypto Market Suffers $1 Billion Liquidation
The crypto market has faced a tumultuous shakeup over the past 24 hours. Particularly, digital holdings valued at more than $1 billion have been caught up in a significant liquidation over this period, triggered by a sudden uptick in global bond yields, according to sources.
From the $1 billion in total liquidations recorded in the crypto market over the past 24 hours, Bitcoin traders faced the largest hit with $499 million worth of Bitcoin liquidated.
Following closely, Ethereum saw roughly $308 million liquidated. Data from Coinglass attributes these substantial liquidations to 176,693 traders being affected just within the past day. The majority were long liquidations, totaling $834.4 million, while short liquidations accounted for $206 million.
Featured image from iStock, Chart from TradingView