Multichain Breach Forces Circle to Freeze $63 Million in USDC

Source: AdobeStock / Tomasz BidermannUSD Coin (USDC) issuer Circle has frozen $63 million belonging to three wallet addresses associated with the hack of the cross-chain bridge platform Multichain.

In a Friday tweet, security firm PeckShield revealed that Circle has frozen $27.65 million, $30.1 million, and $5.5 million in three wallet addresses that received a significant outflow of funds from Multichain after the security breach.

The intervention came after $126 million worth of digital assets was mysteriously transferred from Multichain’s bridge deployments on Fantom, Moonriver, and Dogechain to ious third-party wallets.

Multichain confirmed the security incident in a late Thursday tweet, revealing that they are conducting an investigation into the incident and expressed uncertainty about the cause

They advised all users to stop using Multichain services and revoke any contract approvals associated with the platform

“The lockup assets on the Multichain MPC address have been moved to an unknown address abnormally. The team is not sure what happened and is currently investigating.”

The team further stated that all bridge transactions will remain suspended on their respective chains, without providing a specific timeline for the resumption of services.

Formerly known as Anyswap, Multichain enables users to transfer their cryptocurrency assets across different blockchain networks

This is not the first time Multichain has made headlines this year

At the end of May, rumors were spreading throughout the cryptoverse that the Multichain team has been arrested by the Chinese police.

Additionally, there are rumors that the Chinese authorities may have gained control over the network’s hardware and cold wallet, although these allegations were never confirmed.

Following these controversies, Binance announced that it will cease to facilitate deposits and withdrawals of several cross-chain bridge tokens associated with the Multichain project.

Hackers Steal More Than $200M in Q2, 2023

The Multichain incident comes as hackers have stolen more than $204 million worth of digital assets in ious hacks and scams in the decentralized finance space during the second quarter of 2023, according to a report from crypto portfolio app De.Fi.

The report claimed that the number of incidents in the DeFi world increased by almost 7 times compared to the same quarter last year.

Despite a higher frequency of incidents, the total amount lost during the quarter was significantly lower than in the same quarter last year when a whopping $40 billion was lost to scammers and hackers.

In total, hackers stole over $667 million during the first six months of 2023

The worst month of the first half of the year was March, with $240 million lost and $178 million recovered. February followed in second place, with $156 million lost and only $30,000 recovered