Justin Sun offers 5% bounty as Poloniex losses cross $100 million

On Nov 10, 2023

The Tron founder said Poloniex hackers have seven days to return a bulk of the funds in exchange for a white hat bounty or law enforcement would be engaged for a remedy.

Justin Sun provided three wallet addresses to which hackers could transfer the stolen funds. Sun also added that an internal investigation was underway and affected assets would be fully reimbursed as the platform maintains a “healthy financial position”.

We are offering a 5% white hat bounty to the Poloniex hacker. Please return the funds to the following ETH/TRX/BTC wallets. We will give you 7 days to consider this offer before we engage law enforcement.
ETH Wallet: 0x176F3DAb24a159341c0509bB36B833E7fdd0a132 TRX:…
— H.E. Justin Sun 孙宇晨 (@justinsuntron) November 10, 2023

Blockchain security firm PeckShield alerted community members to outflows from Poloniex hot wallets on Nov. 10. As crypto.news reported, the losses were initially estimated at around $33 million but this number was later updated to over $120 million in cryptocurrencies across Ethereum, Tron and Bitcoin networks.

On-chain data provided by Arkham Intelligence also showed that the Poloniex hacker bought $20 million worth of Tron’s native token TRX shortly after the heist. The massive buy caused a brief 25% spike in TRX prices.

Poloniex was acquired by Circle in 2018, and Sun, along with a group of investors bought into the company back in 2019. The crypto exchange is one of the oldest digital asset trading venues after being founded in 2013.

Prior to the hack, the platform boasted over $600 million in daily trading volume according to CoinMarketCap.

Poloniex was the second Sun-tied crypto exchange to suffer a hack within two months. Exploiters stole $8 million in cryptocurrencies from HTX, formerly Huobi. The rebranded exchange subsequently launched its SAFU fund as an insurance reserve.

HTX recovered the stolen assets after hackers returned 5,000 ETH in a rare move. Other platforms like South Korean exchange GDAC also experienced exploits resulting in losses worth millions.

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