KuCoin Restarts Deposits, Withdrawals for Bitcoin, Ether Following $281M Hack

Cryptocurrency exchange KuCoin is bringing more services back online after suffering a major hack late last month.

• In a service update early on Wednesday, the Seychelles-based platform said it is once more allowing deposits and withdrawals for bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH) and the tether (USDT) stablecoin after upgrading wallet security for those cryptocurrencies.
• KuCoin noted that wallet addresses for these coins had been refreshed and, while the older addresses would still work, it recommended users update.
• The USDT version for the Ethereum blockchain is now open for deposits and withdrawals, while those for Tron, EOS are deposit only. Tether on Omni cannot yet be deposited or withdrawn.
• Full services have been resumed for 65 other cryptocurrency projects, it added.
• After the breach, which saw $281 million in various crypto assets such as XRP and Ethereum-based coins stolen, KuCoin had moved to freeze all wallets and disable services.
• On Oct. 3, the company's CEO, Johnny Lyu, claimed the suspected hackers had been traced and that it had informed law enforcement agencies.
• Lyu further claimed that another $64 million of stolen cryptos had been recovered, bringing the total value of recovered assets to $204 million at the time.
• In its latest update on the incident, also posted Wednesday, the exchange said other entities are continuing to help retrieve funds, with Tether having frozen "about $22 million" in stolen USDT.
• Other projects like Ocean Protocol have returned recovered coins to KuCoin wallets, though the amount involved wasn't disclosed.
• KuCoin also provided a list of suspicious addresses related to the hack and recommended they be added to blacklists.
• Blockchain analytics firm Elliptic said Sept. 29 the hackers had already exchanged millions of stolen tokens for $7.5 million in ETH on the decentralized exchanges Kyber Network and Uniswap.

Also read: Israeli Government Reportedly Investigating Unsuccessful Hack Targeting Crypto CEOs

Edit (13:35 UTC, Oct. 7 2020): Corrected jurisdiction in which KuCoin is based. Corrected details of different availability for versions of tether (14:30 UTC)