Binance freezes funds from Cryptopia heist

Cryptocurrencies stolen during the hack of crypto exchange Cryptopia have been discovered and frozen on another exchange. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao confirmed on Twitter that his company froze an account that’s allegedly connected to the hack. He did not state how much coins have been frozen by his company.

However, not all of the funds has been frozen, the big shot from Binance wrote on Twitter. This suggests that the hacker has been able to sell some of the coins he stole from Cryptopia. However, Binance doesn’t allow users to cash out into fiat. Therefore it’s safe to assume that the stolen cryptocurrency is still digital money and not changed into dollars or euros, yet.

Zhao, who’s best known as “cz” within the crypto community, mentioned that most of the reports in regards to the stolen funds, came from social media. “I don’t understand why the hackers keep sending to Binance. Social media will be pretty fast to report it, and we will freeze it”, he wrote in a tweet. He did confirm in another tweet that he has people and tools to keep an eye on the stolen money, but none is perfect.

Binance is one of the biggest exchanges on the market, with the most trading volume across the board. However, users are not required to identify themselves. This makes Binance an easy location to sell-off stolen coins.

Teams within Binance, and within other companies, are developing ways to track stolen crypto currencies. The crypto exchange is even launching a 32-hour hackathon where software developers will try to tackle the problem.

While Binance is locking crypto currencies, the police in New Zealand are still investigating the case. They are also reading all the posts on blogs and on Twitter, that’s for sure.

“We are also aware of speculation in the online community about what might have occurred. It is too early for us to draw any conclusions and Police will keep an open mind on all possibilities while we gather the information we need”, they wrote in a statement on Wednesday.

Cryptopia was hacked on Monday. By that time at least $3.6 million worth of crypto currencies was stolen. When the hack was discovered, the exchange went into maintenance mode. Cryptopia will stay offline until the police and the authorities have finished their investigation.

Originally published at NEDEROB.