The hackers behind one of the biggest cryptocurrency thefts to date have recovered more than a third of the $613 million stolen digital coins, the company said at the hacking center on Wednesday.
Poly Network , a decentralized finance platform that allows peer-to-peer transactions, said on Twitter that $260 million of stolen funds had been recovered but $353 million had not been paid.
The company, which allows users to exchange tokens across various blockchains, said Tuesday that it had been hacked, asking perpetrators to return stolen funds and threatening legal action.
According to blockchain forensics firm Chainalysis, hackers utilized a exposed in digital contracts that poly network hacker uses to move assets between different blockchains.
A man who claimed to have carried out the hack said he did it “for fun” and wanted to “uncover the vulnerability” before others could exploit it, according to a digital message from Elliptic, a cryptocurrency tracking company.
“It was always the plan,” to return the tokens, wrote the alleged hacker, adding: “I’m not very interested in money.”
The hackers have not been identified and Reuters was unable to verify the validity of the messages.
Elliptic co-founder Tom Robinson said the decision to return the money could be due to the headache of laundering the stolen cryptocurrency in such a way.
Cryptocurrency firm Tether CEO said on Twitter that the company had frozen $33 million in connection with the hack, and other cryptocurrency executives told Poly Network they would try to help as well.
“Even if you can steal cryptocurrencies, laundering and exchanging those currencies is extremely difficult due to blockchain transparency and the widespread use of blockchain analytics by financial institutions,” said Robinson.
Poly Network did not respond to requests for further details. It was not immediately clear where the platform was or whether law enforcement agencies were investigating the robbery.
The robbery collates to $530 million in digital coins loot from Tokyo-based exchange Coincheck in 2018.
Exchange Gox, also based in Tokyo, collapsed in 2014 after losing half a billion dollars in bitcoins.
The Poly Network hackers stems from the fact that losses from theft, hacking and fraud related to decentralized finance (DeFi) have reached record highs, according to crypto intelligence firm CipherTrace.
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