HTX Offers Hacker $400,000 Bounty and Advisory Role to Return Stolen $8 Million

Summary

• HTX, formerly Huobi, suffered a hack resulting in the loss of 5,000 ETH, valued at around $8 million.
• HTX has fully covered the losses and is offering a $400,000 bounty to the hacker who returns the stolen funds.
• HTX is also offering the hacker a job as a security white hat advisor if they return the funds.

Barely two weeks after its rebrand, crypto exchange HTX (formerly Huobi), faced a significant hack resulting in the loss of 5,000 ether (ETH), valued at around $8 million. HTX advisor and Tron founder, Justin Sun, took to X to address the incident, reassuring users that their assets remained secure.

The hacked wallet in question was identified as one of HTX's hot wallets, which had seen approximately $500 million in deposits from Binance since its creation in March, according to Arkham data.

Sun confirmed that the exchange had fully covered all losses and successfully resolved all issues related to the Sunday attack. 

Despite the breach, Sun remained optimistic about the situation, highlighting, "$8 million represents a relatively small sum in comparison to the $3 billion worth of assets held by our users. It also amounts to just two weeks' revenue for the HTX platform." He emphasized that all funds remained secure, and trading operations continued without interruption.

In a bid to encourage the hacker to return the stolen funds, Sun announced a white hat bounty offer, stating, "We are willing to offer 5% of the stolen amount (400,000 USD) as a white hat reward to encourage the hacker to return the stolen funds. If the hacker returns the funds, we will also hire them as a security white hat advisor for HTX."

Sun further highlighted the exchange’s proactive security measures in a September 26 post, including the SAFU fund and real-time monitoring mechanisms.

As HTX works to recover from this incident, its native token, HT token, has been relatively stable, currently trading at $2.44, with a slight 0.74% drop in the past 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap.