Poloniex wallets drained of as much as $100 million in crypto assets

The exchange’s major shareholder Justin Sun confirmed the “hack incident”

article-image

Sharaf Maksumov/Shutterstock, modified by Blockworks

share

Cryptocurrency exchange Poloniex suffered unauthorized withdrawals beginning at around 5:30 am ET Friday.

The withdrawals from Poloniex include millions of dollars worth of ether (ETH), tron (TRX) stablecoins (USDT/USDC) and chainlink (LINK), plus more than 250 other tokens with aggregate values between $1,000 to $800,000 at the time of the theft.

A total of $23 million remains in the attacker’s primary wallet, but much of the haul has been transferred elsewhere, including $11 million in USDT, exchanged for ether.

Security firm PeckShield first reported the suspicious transactions. Justin Sun, a major investor in Poloniex confirmed the incident on X:

“Poloniex maintains a healthy financial position and will fully reimburse the affected funds. Additionally, we are exploring opportunities for collaboration with other exchanges to facilitate the recovery of these funds,” Sun said.

Earlier, the exchange’s X account wrote, “our wallet has been disabled for maintenance,” but it subsequently reposted Sun’s account.

On-chain data analytics platforms Nansen and Arkham Intelligence observed substantial net outflows from the exchange:

Loading Tweet..

Arkham, tracking the flow of funds, puts the loss at closer to $100 million, monitoring $31.8 million in ETH, $28.3 million in TRX and $13.8 million in BTC.

The attack appears to have been initiated by a withdrawal of 4,900 ETH (about $10 million) from the exchange, followed by a flurry of withdrawals continuing until 6:40 am ET.

Poloniex subsequently offered the “Poloniex hacker” a 5% “white hat bounty” if the funds are returned within 7 days.

Earlier this year, the exchange settled with the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control for $7.6 million over sanctions violations.

Justin Sun has controlling stakes in both Poloniex and Huobi crypto exchanges and founded the Tron network.


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Upcoming Events

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

Research

article-image

Judge Analisa Torres said the parties have not demonstrated that vacating her prior ruling is in the best interest of the public

article-image

Prediction markets have found a mainstream fit

article-image

Money for enemies isn’t fun, but crypto can be

article-image

Onchain SOL perps wiped $31 million, outpacing CEX volumes two days in a row

article-image

Fed Chair Jerome Powell told Senators Wednesday that the timeline on lowering interest rates is up in the air

article-image

Credit infrastructure DeFi protocol Grove makes allocation into a CLO segment “ripe for movement into DeFi”