$1.6 Billion Altcoin Hacked, Price Crashed

Blockchain protocol Bittensor (TAO) rapidly lost value after the attack at night.

Bittensor developers detected an attack after midnight today. Developers stopped operations on the network to control the situation.

TAO price crashed

During the attack, the wallets of some Bittensor users were emptied. “We are investigating the situation and as a precaution we have completely halted transactions on the blockchain until we obtain more information about the nature of this attack,” the Bittensor team said.

Bittensor co-founder Ala Shaabana later announced that they had put the network in "security mode". Meanwhile, although block production continues on the network, no transactions are made. Blockchain records show that the last transaction on the Bittensor network was made around 02:00 UTC.

Bittensor is a blockchain-based protocol that aims to build a decentralized network for machine learning. Bittensor's own cryptocurrency TAO lost approximately 15% of its value in 24 hours, according to TradingView data.

Millions of dollars were stolen

According to ZachXBT's post, $8 million worth of TAO belonging to a Bittensor user was stolen during the attack. It is estimated that the attackers captured the private keys belonging to the user.

The Bittensor team continues to investigate the cause of the attack.