“Arthur 0x,” the founder of large crypto investment firm DeFiance Capital, was hacked on one of his hot wallets, resulting in the loss of more than $1.6 million in nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and crypto.
The crypto community has rallied to his aid to help him recover the stolen stuff after he requested people to blacklist the hacker’s wallet.
Several people on Twitter have tried to figure out how the attack happened and where the hacker got access to his hot wallets.
“Cirrus,” a member of the NFT community, went so far as to purchase two of the stolen Azuki NFTs and decide to return them to Arthur at his expense. Cirrus confirmed to Crypto blog website today that he, “found out they were hacked, and instead of selling them for profit like the other folks who got some of his, decided I’d sell them back to him at cost to help him out.”
Cirrus went on to say that this is “not the first time” this has occurred to him. He said, “I could easily go sell them for 6-8 ETH profit, but it just isn’t right.”
His profile reveals that he had previously been a victim of rug pulls three times, which most likely influenced his feelings for his fellow victim.
A rug pull occurs when a crypto or NFT project abruptly ceases operations and the value of their token or NFT plummets without warning. Rug pulls are almost often confirmations of a hoax.
In total, Arthur appears to have misplaced 78 different NFTs from five collections, the majority of which were Azukis. In addition, he misplaced 68 Wrapped Ether (WETH), 4,349 Staked DYDX (stkDYDX), and 1,578 LooksRare (LOOKS) tokens.
At around 12:30 a.m. UTC, the hacker began shifting assets and then immediately put all of the NFTs up for auction on the OpenSea NFT marketplace. At the time of writing, the hacker’s wallet contained 545 ETH, which was worth around $1.6 million.
This hack emphasizes the necessity of operational security when dealing with self-custody of crypto assets, as even the industry’s highest echelons can be targeted. In Arthur’s situation, he is perplexed as to how this happened to him, writing in a tweet, “Hot wallet on mobile phone is indeed not safe enough.”
To read our blog on “Over $1 Trillion in losses due to Bitcoin and Crypto crash,” click here.
