• Turkey’s BtcTurk halts crypto transactions after $48M in suspicious activity across multiple blockchains.
• Hackers swap stolen funds for Ether and other assets, moving them through several wallets.
• Turkish lira deposits and withdrawals remain fully operational amid BtcTurk’s hot wallet breach.

BtcTurk, the oldest cryptocurrency exchange in Turkey, has halted cryptocurrency deposits and withdrawals temporarily due to unusual activity that showed a transaction of $48 million worth of cryptocurrency assets. 

Blockchain security firm Cyvers reported the transactions on Thursday, August 14, when the unusual movement was observed on several networks, including Ethereum, Avalanche, Arbitrum, Base, Optimism, Mantle, and Polygon. The vast majority of funds were sent to two recipient addresses, which is a sign of a potentially organized attack.

Stolen Assets and Fund Movements

BtcTurk responded swiftly to the breach by freezing all cryptocurrency transactions to prevent further movement of the stolen assets. 

Although cryptocurrency deposits and withdrawals are temporarily disabled, Buy and sell transactions and Turkish lira deposits and withdrawals continue to operate normally. This will enable its users to maintain their access to local currency accounts. 

According to the exchange, the problem was caused by a technical difficulty with its hot wallets, that is, the part of assets stored online to enable faster transactions. BtcTurk also reassured its users that the majority of their funds are in cold wallets, which are offline and generally considered much more secure.

BtcTurk has also initiated an investigation as part of the incident response and is cooperating with blockchain security experts on this incident to identify the full scope of the breach and the individuals involved.

According to Cyvers, the hacker began exchanging stolen funds into Ether (ETH), with CertiK also verifying that the assets were withdrawn through three different wallets. These wallets consist of 2 Ethereum accounts (0x7D91D1 […], 0xA041Fe […]) and a Solana (SOL) account (9sjdD9Xg […]).

According to Etherscan, some of the recent swaps include MetaMask, an Ethereum wallet platform that supports decentralized exchanges and transactions. This asset transfer indicates that the hacker might be trying to launder the stolen cash by either exchanging it for other cryptocurrencies or cleaning the money through different websites.

With the investigation still underway, the Turkey crypto exchange has promised to keep the users updated and has assured that it will resume crypto-related services as soon as the problem is fixed.

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BtcTurk’s Recent Hack Adds Security Concerns

According to reports, this hack follows a breach in June last year when BtcTurk reported unauthorized withdrawals from its hot wallets.

According to Binance CEO Richard Teng, his exchange helped freeze over $5.3 million of the stolen funds during that breach. During this breach, reportedly, $55 million was stolen from BtcTurk’s hot wallets. 

Furthermore, the security breach prompted Ozgur Gulneri, the CEO, to resign after seven years in office. After his exit, Kerem Tibuk, the founder of BtcTurk, took over as the acting CEO.

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