Bitbns' Indian cryptocurrency eventually admitted that it was hacked in February 2022, resulting in $7.5 million in compromised funds.
The confession comes only a few hours after crypto sleuth zachxbt called the exchange, tweeting it covered the hack under pretext of maintaining the system.
Funds Were Compromised: Bitbns Founder
Gaurav Dahake, the founder of the Indian crypto exchange Bitbns, admitted on 1st March 2023 that the exchange was hacked in February 2022. Speaking at a session, dahake said the money was indeed in jeopardy, but said it was not an abnormal situation. He noted that the exchange was off-line for the team to analyze anomalies on the platform.
Admission came after crypto researcher zachxbt called the swap, claiming it covered the February 2022 hack under cover of system maintenance. ZachXBT shared screenshots of Bitbns tweets from February 2022 and tweeted,
“Let’s call out the crypto exchange BitBNS for hiding a $7.5 million hack from their users on 1st February 2022 and then proceeding to tell them it was “system maintenance.”
Dahake Doubles Down
However, Dahake, despite admitting to the hack, stated that the Bitbns team took down the exchange only after noticing an abnormally high throughput on their servers. In the dahake's opinion, the team found that polygon prices (matt), bnb (bnb), and aave (aave) must be rectified, the identification of a significant difference in the purchase and sale prices of the chips. The team has also been able to uncover withdrawal anomalies.
During the investigation, dahake said the team discovered that specific addresses had received various tokens from the platform. These tokens have been converted to ethereum and sent to various addresses. Dahake has not confirmed the funds that have been jeopardized. But Zachxbt set that number at $7.5 million.
Nothing Abnormal About It
Interestingly, Dahake stated that this could not be considered abnormal activity, adding that the same had occurred at multiple other exchanges such as Binance, KuKoin, and others. He stated,
“Most big exchanges saw such incidents. Bination had compromised funds. Bitbns, also seen a little mishap. Just before this incident, we had some irregular activity on the platform and it was there that we decided to put the exchange offline for a few minutes to analyze the problem."
Elaborating on the anomalies discovered during the investigation, Dahake stated,
“We found issues with specifically a few token prices; there was a difference in buying and selling prices. At the time, certain users were attempting to withdraw funds. We wanted to look at the funds and came up with a specific address, a certain amount of money has flowed from various chips, and these have become Ethereum and gone to different addresses.
Dahake also added that is currently the only exchange in India that is allowing users to withdraw their crypto. Since February 2022, withdraw volumes have been high.