Liquid, a licensed crypto exchange in Japan, has stopped asset deposits and withdrawals after its hot wallets were compromised in a security breach. According to The Block, the stolen assets are valued at up to $74 million.

Liquid’s hot wallets hacked

In a Tweet on Thursday AM Japan time, the company said that its hot wallets had been hacked and that assets were being moved to cold wallets.

According to Liquid, the hack resulted in the theft of bitcoin, ether, XRP, and TRX currencies. The exchange stated tracking the assets’ movements and collaborating with other exchanges to freeze and retrieve the stolen money. According to Liquid, the hackers were able to move part of the stolen money to second and third accounts.

KuCoin’s CEO, Johnny Lyu, stated that the exchange was aware of the breach and blocked the hacker’s addresses.

According to The Block, the hacker reportedly stole assets worth up to $74 million after starting transactions worth approximately $80 million at the time of the attack.

The hacker’s ethereum address had nearly $44.8 million in money assigned to them at the time of writing, while their bitcoin address held tokens worth around $4.8 million.

The hack in crypto exchanges

Liquid’s hack is the most current in a long line of cryptocurrency hacks and other crypto-related crimes that have grown more prevalent in recent months. According to CipherTrace, crypto assets worth $681 million were linked to thefts, hacks, and fraud between January and the end of July.

That number had almost doubled in the last week when the DeFi platform Poly Network was hacked, and assets worth more than $600 million were taken in one of the largest crypto heists ever. Despite the fact that the hacker has already refunded a part of the funds, the big breach has brought fresh attention to cryptosystem flaws and crypto-related theft.

Crypto-related crimes and illegal activities are among the major worries voiced by regulators, financial institutions, and governments as cryptocurrencies become more widely used.