Cryptocurrency exchange hid information about hacker attack for a year until it was exposed

The Indian cryptocurrency exchange Bitbns has recognized the hacker attack that took place last year in February, although it had been claiming that the failure of the crypto exchange was due to technical work. During the AMA session, the exchange’s CEO Gaurav Dahake spoke about the hack. The head of Bitbns did not disclose the date of the hack or the extent of the hacker attack. Instead, he tried to reassure users by saying that many crypto exchanges have experienced theft of funds, including Binance.

«Many large exchanges have experienced similar incidents. Binance had its funds compromised. Bitbns also faced a small incident. Right before it, we detected atypical actions on the platform, so we decided to shut down the exchange for a few minutes to analyze the problem,» Dahake assured the audience.

The attendees of the AMA session got the impression that the confession of the Bitbns head was not made for nothing. Earlier, crypto whistleblower ZachXBT publicly stated that the Indian crypto exchange had been hiding the fact of hacking the platform for a year under the pretext of «technical work.»

Let’s call out the crypto exchange @bitbns for hiding a $ 7.5m hack from their users on February 1, 2022 and then proceeding to tell them it was «system maintenance»

0×24f361E1eeEdF29fd6D724C9393132D61c51ebB1 pic.twitter.com/a3aBqlgW0z

— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) February 28, 2023

ZachXBT estimates that the exchange lost about $ 7.5 million in various tokens, which the attacker converted to ETH and laundered through Tornado Cash. Another part of the stolen funds was laundered through an unknown crypto exchange. ZachXBT called for a boycott of the platform because of its silence on the hacker attack.

Amidst the scandal, Bitbns did not think of anything better than to hold a trading contest with a prize fund. The cryptocurrency community reacted aggressively to such actions. Users urged Bitbns to restore the ability to withdraw cryptocurrencies.

Amid this news, the price of the BNS token in the BNS/USDT trading pair fell by more than 37%. According to TradingView, BNS is trading at $ 0.36, and the trading volume is barely above $ 380,000.

It is worth noting that this is not the first trouble for Bitbns. In August last year, the exchange stopped the withdrawal function in Indian rupees. The exchange stated that law enforcement agencies were behind the blocking of the bank account. At the time, Dahake claimed that the reason for the blocking was allegedly too harsh legal regulations of the local crypto market. However, it is unclear whether the blocking is related to last year’s February hack of Bitbns.