Turkey's largest cryptocurrency market BtcTurk announced on Saturday that its exchange had been hacked. A well-known Bitcoin analyst estimates that the amount of money stolen amounts to almost 51 million euros.
"Our teams have determined that there was a cyberattack on our platform on June 22, 2024, which resulted in uncontrolled withdrawals being made. Only a portion of the balances in the hot wallets of 10 cryptocurrencies were affected by the cyberattack in question, and our cold wallets, where the majority of assets are kept, are safe," the exchange said in the statement.
A hot wallet is a cryptocurrency wallet that is always connected to the internet or another connected device - while a cold wallet is offline and thus safe from hacking.
"BtcTurk's financial strength far exceeds the amounts affected by this attack and users' assets will not be affected by these losses," the market added.
The exchange stresses that it will conduct a "detailed investigation" into the matter and that security agencies have been informed.
"As a precautionary measure, cryptocurrency deposits and withdrawals have been halted and will be made available again once our investigation is complete," BtcTurk concluded in the statement.
"We thank you for your understanding during this process and will keep you informed of any developments in this matter."
ZachXBT, a well-known Bitcoin analyst, posted on X that he thinks "the culprit is likely an address he observed moving the 1.96M AVAX ($54.2M) and transferring it to Coinbase/THORChain." The analyst also added a cryptocurrency address to his post.
Cryptocurrencies are very popular in Turkey, and the country is the fourth largest crypto trading market in the world.
The use of cryptocurrencies in Turkey began to increase rapidly after 2020. Users wanted to protect themselves against the sharp decline in the value of the lira.
Faruk Fatih Ozer, the founder of Thodex, one of Turkey's largest crypto exchanges that turned out to be a scam, was sentenced to 11,196 years in prison last year for defrauding investors of millions of dollars.
