27 entries tagged “exchange”.
CEO of the Mt. Gox Bitcoin exchange at its 2014 collapse. A Japanese court convicted him of falsifying data but acquitted him of embezzlement relating to the missing bitcoins.
On September 20, 2024 the Singapore-based exchange BingX lost an estimated $52M when attackers compromised hot wallets across seven+ chains. Security firms said the laundering pattern matched North Korea's Lazarus Group. BingX froze withdrawals (calling it 'wallet maintenance') and recovered part of the funds.
A Hong Kong-based crypto exchange that halted withdrawals on November 13, 2022 — two days after FTX's bankruptcy — blaming a 'system upgrade' and counterparty risk. Withdrawals never resumed; Hong Kong police treated it as suspected fraud and arrested senior executives, while analysts tracked tens of millions in user crypto being moved off the platform.
About $70M was drained from the Hong Kong-based exchange CoinEx in September 2023 after its hot-wallet private keys were compromised. Researchers (Elliptic, ZachXBT) linked the theft to North Korea's Lazarus Group, partly via wallets shared with the Stake.com hack.
The New Zealand exchange Cryptopia was hacked in January 2019, losing about NZ$30M (~$20M) in crypto, and was placed into liquidation in May 2019. A landmark NZ court ruling held that the assets were held on trust for account holders.
A Turkish exchange that abruptly halted withdrawals in April 2021 as founder Faruk Fatih Özer fled abroad. Loss estimates are disputed (the indictment cited ~$43M; media reported up to ~$2B). Özer was sentenced to 11,196 years in 2023.
A Canadian exchange that collapsed in 2019 after the reported death of CEO Gerald Cotten. An Ontario Securities Commission review concluded it operated like a Ponzi scheme, with a ~$169M (CAD) shortfall driven by Cotten's hidden trading losses.
A Singapore-based crypto lender that froze withdrawals in August 2022 amid the Terra collapse, having funneled ~$317M of user funds into Terra's Anchor Protocol and lost an estimated ~$189.7M. In May 2026, Singapore charged former CEO Zhu Juntao with six counts of fraud.
In January 2025, the Singapore-based exchange Phemex had its hot wallets drained across 16 blockchains, with losses estimated at $73–85M. On-chain investigators (ZachXBT, Arkham) tied it to North Korea's Lazarus Group, later linking it directly to the Bybit and BingX hacks via commingled funds.
On June 18, 2025, Iran's largest crypto exchange, Nobitex, had ~$90M drained from its hot wallets during the Israel–Iran conflict. The pro-Israel hacktivist group Gonjeshke Darande ('Predatory Sparrow') claimed responsibility and deliberately 'burned' the funds to vanity addresses bearing anti-IRGC messages.
In November 2019, 342,000 ETH (~$41.5M at the time) was stolen from South Korean exchange Upbit. In November 2024 South Korea's National Police Agency officially attributed the theft to North Korea's Lazarus and Andariel groups — its first such attribution of an exchange hack.
A crypto exchange that U.S. and EU authorities say laundered roughly $700M+ of illicit funds, acting as a counterparty for the Hydra darknet market and ransomware crews. Its infrastructure was seized in January 2023; founder Anatoly Legkodymov pleaded guilty to running an unlicensed money-transmitting business.
A cryptocurrency exchange (2011–2017) that the U.S. DOJ called one of the primary ways cybercriminals laundered illicit funds. It received proceeds of hacks, ransomware, and drug sales — including ~300,000 BTC tied to the Mt. Gox theft — and was shut down in 2017 when operator Alexander Vinnik was arrested.
Founder and CEO of the Turkish exchange Thodex, which halted withdrawals in April 2021 as he fled abroad. Sentenced in 2023 to 11,196 years; reported to have died in prison in November 2025.
Founder and CEO of the Canadian exchange QuadrigaCX. An Ontario Securities Commission review concluded he ran it like a Ponzi scheme. He was reported to have died in December 2018.
About $196M was stolen from the BitMart exchange in December 2021 after attackers obtained a private key controlling two hot wallets (~$100M on Ethereum, ~$96M on BNB Chain). Funds were laundered via 1inch and Tornado Cash; BitMart reimbursed affected users.
About $120M+ was drained from hot wallets of the Justin Sun-owned exchange Poloniex on November 10, 2023, across Ethereum, Tron, and Bitcoin. Security firms attributed it to a private-key compromise, with the North Korea-linked Lazarus Group widely suspected.
About $305M (4,502.9 BTC) was stolen from the Japanese exchange DMM Bitcoin in May 2024. The FBI, DC3, and Japan's NPA attributed it to North Korea's TraderTraitor, which used a fake-recruiter lure to compromise an employee at wallet vendor Ginco. DMM later wound down.
The largest crypto theft on record: about $1.5B in Ether was stolen from the Bybit exchange on February 21, 2025. The FBI attributed it to North Korea (TraderTraitor/Lazarus), which compromised the Safe{Wallet} signing interface to redirect a routine cold-wallet transfer.
About $230M+ was stolen from India's largest crypto exchange, WazirX, in July 2024 after attackers compromised a multisignature wallet and altered its logic. Blockchain analysts attributed the theft to North Korea's Lazarus Group.
About $281M in crypto was stolen from the Singapore-based exchange KuCoin in September 2020 after attackers obtained hot-wallet private keys. Chainalysis attributed the theft to North Korea's Lazarus Group; KuCoin recovered roughly 84% of the assets.
The Japanese exchange Coincheck lost about 523M NEM tokens (~$530M) to attackers in January 2018 — then one of the largest crypto thefts. The coins had been stored in an internet-connected hot wallet; Coincheck pledged to reimburse affected users.
About 119,754 BTC were stolen from the Bitfinex exchange in August 2016. In 2022 the U.S. DOJ arrested Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan ('Razzlekhan') for laundering the proceeds; both pleaded guilty, and Lichtenstein was sentenced to five years in 2024.
Once the dominant Bitcoin exchange, Tokyo-based Mt. Gox filed for bankruptcy in February 2014 after about 850,000 BTC (worth roughly $450M at the time) went missing. A security firm concluded most coins were stolen from its hot wallet over years.
A major cryptocurrency exchange that collapsed into bankruptcy in November 2022. Prosecutors described an ~$8 billion shortfall in customer funds; founder Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted on seven counts and sentenced to 25 years.
A Russian-run crypto exchange that the U.S. DOJ says processed at least $96B since 2019 while laundering proceeds for ransomware crews, darknet markets, and North Korea's Lazarus Group. Sanctioned by OFAC in 2022; its infrastructure was seized in March 2025 and two administrators were indicted.
A crypto exchange and 'Himalaya Coin/Dollar' project that was one strand of a >$1B fraud the U.S. DOJ pinned on exiled Chinese businessman Guo Wengui (Miles Guo). A jury convicted Guo in July 2024 on nine counts; prosecutors said ~$262M was raised via the Himalaya Exchange alone.
