WOO X suffered an authorized breach on July 24, resulting in the theft of roughly $14 million in crypto.

The exchange said it is investigating the “contained incident” and revealed that the breach resulted in unauthorized withdrawals from nine user accounts. The exchange has paused withdrawals as a precaution.

It added in its statement that it has already contacted the affected users and intends to reimburse them fully.

$14 million stolen through different tokens

Roughly 20 minutes later, the company reiterated that nine accounts were affected, emphasized that many attempted withdrawals had been blocked once the issue was detected, and repeated its commitment to cover all losses.

About an hour after the initial alert, WOO X updated the tally to $14 million and published six addresses that it claimed belonged to the exploiter. 

As of press time, the exchange did not provide further technical details on how the attacker gained access to the accounts or when withdrawals would be restored.

Around an hour after WOO X’s first announcement, Cyvers Alerts reported detecting more than $12 million in suspicious flows involving the exchange across Bitcoin, Ethereum (ETH), BNB Chain, and Arbitrum. 

According to Cyvers, 1 ETH address received $1 million in USDT from a WOO hot wallet, swapped it to ETH, and later moved $7.3 million to a new address. 

On BNB Chain, 5 BTCB were received from WOO, converted to BNB, and transferred to another brand-new address.

WOO X said it will provide another update once withdrawals are re-enabled. 

For now, the company assured users that the incident was limited to a small set of accounts that held a significant amount of crypto, and pledged to release more details about the attack vector and the timetable for restoring full platform functionality.

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The GMX protocol halted trading on GMX V1 after a liquidity pool suffered an exploit on Wednesday, leading to $40 million in funds being stolen and sent to an unknown wallet.

GMX V1 is the first version of the GMX perpetual exchange deployed on the Arbitrum network. The attacked pool provides the liquidity provider of the GMX protocol with a basket of underlying digital assets including Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH) and stablecoins, according to the GMX team.

The protocol has also announced a temporary suspension in minting and redemption of GLP tokens on both Arbitrum and the layer-1 Avalanche network to protect against any additional fallout from the cybersecurity exploit.

Users of the platform were instructed to disable leverage and change their settings to disable GLP minting.

“The exploit does not affect GMX V2, its markets, or liquidity pools, nor the GMX token itself. Based on the available information, the vulnerability is limited to GMX V1 and its GLP pool,” the team said.

Blockchain security company SlowMist attributed the exploit to a design flaw that allowed hackers to manipulate the GLP token price through the calculation of the total assets under management.

Hacks and cybersecurity crimes continue to be major pain points in the crypto industry, affecting both centralized platforms and decentralized exchanges. The hacks have caused billions of dollars in cumulative losses and discouraged new participants from adopting crypto due to the fear of victimization by sophisticated threat actors.

Related: Brazil’s central bank service provider hacked, $140M stolen

Crypto hacks continue to be a feature of the digital asset landscape

Losses from crypto hacks reached $2.5 billion in the first half of 2025, with approximately $1.4 billion in stolen funds resulting from the Bybit hack in February.

In June, Iranian crypto exchange Nobitex fell victim to a cyberattack from a pro-Israeli hacker group called Gonjeshke Darande.

The hack caused over $81 million in losses for the Iranian exchange, which was forced to pause services temporarily to mitigate the effects of the hack.

The United States Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced sanctions on Song Kum Hyok, a group of North Korea state-affiliated hackers, on Wednesday.

Song Kum Hyok infiltrated several crypto companies and defense contracting businesses, intending to exploit these organizations from the inside with both social engineering scams and cybersecurity breaches.

Magazine: North Korea crypto hackers tap ChatGPT, Malaysia road money siphoned: Asia Express

]]> https://earlybirdsinvest.com/gmx-halts-trading-token-minting-following-40-million-exploit/feed/ 0 46700 https://earlybirdsinvest.com/sec-halts-grayscale-large-cap-fund-approval-for-review/ https://earlybirdsinvest.com/sec-halts-grayscale-large-cap-fund-approval-for-review/#respond Wed, 02 Jul 2025 20:19:38 +0000 https://earlybirdsinvest.com/sec-halts-grayscale-large-cap-fund-approval-for-review/

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s leaders are reviewing the agency’s recent approval of a Grayscale effort to convert a fund into an exchange-traded fund (ETF), a letter dated July 1 said.

The SEC allowed Grayscale to uplist the Digital Large Cap Fund (GDLC), which holds $755 million in bitcoin

, Ethereum , XRP , Solana and Cardano , into an ETF through delegated authority — meaning the SEC’s commissioners did not vote to approve the conversion, but rather agency staff gave the sign-off.

“This letter is to notify you that, pursuant to Rule 431 of the Commission’s Rules of Practice, 17 CFR 201.431, the Commission will review the delegated action,” the letter, addressed to the New York Stock Exchange, said. “In accordance with Rule 431(e), the July 1, 2025 order is stayed until the Commission orders otherwise.”

The SEC said it would let the NYSE know “of any pertinent action taken by the Commission.”

Any commissioner can ask that an SEC action be reviewed. In the past, commissioners have asked to review ETF disapprovals, for example. The letter did not indicate which commissioner or commissioners asked for the review.

GDLC is benchmarked to CoinDesk’s CoinDesk 5 Index.

Spokespeople for Grayscale and the NYSE did not immediately return a request for comment.

An SEC spokesperson declined to comment on the letter.

UPDATE (July 2, 2025, 20:05 UTC): Adds additional detail, SEC declining to comment.

The Bank of Korea (BOK) suspended its central bank digital currency project, Singaporean financial newspaper Business Times reported on Monday.

The project had reached the stage of developing a pilot program with participating banks.

The central bank told the banks it will pause discussions related to the initiative, according to the report, which cited an unidentified BOK official.

South Korea’s President Lee Jae-myung, who took office June 4, courted the country’s cryptocurrency community during his election campaign. Among his promises was a pledge to support a won-based stablecoin market.

Earlier this month, Lee’s ruling Democratic party submitted a bill that would allow qualifying companies to issue stablecoins.

CBDCs are a form of fiat currency that are meant to act as a digital counterpart to cash. They have been criticized as a concept, particularly among the crypto community, over concerns about privacy, surveillance and state control.

The Bank of Korea did not respond to CoinDesk’s request for comment.

Solana’s largest decentralized exchange aggregator, Jupiter, has decided to halt all community voting through next year and keep its governance Treasury sealed until 2027, citing community burnout and a need to prioritize building new products.

The move temporarily disables one of the main utilities for Jupiter’s native token, JUP, which powers governance proposals and decisions within the Jupiter DAO.

Voting activities will be on hold until at least the end of 2025, according to a statement shared by team member Kash Dhanda.

He wrote:

“Recently, one thing has become clear: the current DAO structure isn’t working as intended. We hear the complaints. We see the breakdown in trust. We feel the perpetual FUD cycle that grows with every vote.”

The statement added that the team intends to shift energy away from frequent governance votes and toward strengthening the project’s product suite and market position.

The governance pause comes as Jupiter’s DEX remains a major player on Solana, with more than $2.2 billion locked on the platform and daily fees averaging $1.6 million. It handles upwards of 80,000 token swaps each day, serving over 18,000 daily active traders.

However, Jupiter’s aggregator has lost momentum in recent months, with user traffic dropping by up to 60% and competitors like PumpSwap dominating the meme coin niche, now accounting for a majority of that trading volume on Solana.

Treasury closed until 2027

Under the new plan, the DAO’s fund, known internally as the Litterbox Trustm will remain inaccessible for new spending or budget proposals for the next two years.

Revenue from staking services such as jupSOL will continue to feed the Treasury, but fresh JUP minting for workgroups and governance rewards has been suspended.

Regular staking will still be available to token holders, with about 50 million JUP reserved for ongoing staking incentives. Aside from an upcoming 700 million token distribution, part of the final phase of the Jupuary airdrop, no additional JUP emissions are planned.

The team expects the break in governance rewards to help reduce selling pressure on the token, which has recently hovered near annual lows of around $0.40.

A redesigned governance structure is set to be introduced in 2026, aiming to address past disputes and streamline decision-making before the Treasury fully reopens the following year.

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