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Digital currency investors suffer $6.2m loss after hackers’ attack

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Digital currency investors suffer $6.2m loss after hackers' attack

Investors of Belt Finance, an automated market that provides decentralized finance (DeFi), lost about $6.2 million to hackers during the weekend after its Smart Chain tokens were attacked.

While its other offerings such as beltBTC [bitcoin], beltETH [Ethereum] and beltBNB [binance coin] were not touched, BeltTokens was the only digital currency in Belt Finance vault that was ransacked by the hackers, costing the platform $50 million.

Investors use Belt Finance due to its guaranty of asset valuation stability and other extra features like loan access opportunity for its users, which they can use for investment or withdraw.

Individuals or institutions that invested in tokens on the platform are issued BeltTokens as receipt for depositing into Belt Finance vault. This receipt stands for the liquidity owned by the depositor.

This deposit was the one hackers hit to steal $6.2 million. The stolen tokens were transferred from the Binance Smart Chain – which was used to build Belt Finance – and converted into Ethereum on 1inch DEX in eight transactions.

Read also: DIGITAL CURRENCY: ‘CBN not against financial innovations’

In an incident report seen by Ripples Nigeria, Belt Finance said, “On May 29, 2021, a flash loan attack was initiated on the BSC 4Belt (USDT/USDC/BUSD/DAI) pool.

“The attacker created a smart contract that used PancakeSwap for flash loans and exploited our beltBUSD pool and its underlying strategy protocols and then proceeded to execute the contract 8 times for a total profit of 6,234,753 BUSD.

“beltBUSD vault users suffered a 21.36% loss of funds, while 4Belt pool users suffered a 5.51% loss of funds. No other pools/vaults were affected.” the report disclosed.

The platform has stopped withdrawals and deposits to prevent further losses and protect its users’ assets. It said the decision was made to prevent further attack on other vaults.

By Fakoyejo Ayodeji…

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