Turkey’s biggest crypto exchange BtcTurk hacked

Turkey’s biggest cryptocurrency market BtcTurk said in an announcement on Saturday that their exchange had been hacked, while a popular Bitcoin analyst claimed that the amount of money stolen amounted to nearly 51 million euros.

“Our teams have detected that there was a cyber attack on our platform on June 22, 2024, which caused uncontrolled withdrawals to be processed. Only some of the balances in the hot wallets of 10 cryptocurrencies were affected by the cyber attack in question, and our cold wallets, where most of the assets are kept, are safe,” the exchange said in the statement.

A hot wallet is a cryptocurrency wallet that is always connected to the internet or another connected device – whereas a cold wallet is one that is offline and so safe from hacking.

“BtcTurk’s financial strength is well above the amounts affected by this attack, and user assets will not be affected by these losses,” the market added.

The exchange further added that they are conducting a “detailed research” on the matter and security authorities have been noticed.

“As a precaution, cryptocurrency deposits and withdrawals have been stopped and will be made available for use as soon as our work is completed,” BtcTurk concluded in the statement.

“We thank you for your understanding during this process and inform you that we will share with you all developments regarding the issue.”

ZachXBT, a well-known Bitcoin analyst said in a post on X that he thinks “the culprit is likely this address I have been watching who has been moving 1.96M AVAX ($54.2M) and transferring to Coinbase/THORChain.” The analyst also attached a cryptocurrency address to their post.

Cryptocurrencies are highly popular in Turkey, and the country is the fourth-largest crypto trading market in the world.

Cryptocurrency use in Turkey started to increase rapidly after 2020 as a defence against a deep slide in the value of the lira.

Faruk Fatih Ozer, the founder of Thodex, one of Turkey’s largest crypto exchanges that turned out to be an exit scam, was jailed last year for 11,196 years for defrauding investors of millions of dollars.