Cryptocurrency hedge fund suffers huge loss of funds after attack

The main hedge fund of BlockTower Capital, a manager focused on cryptocurrencies, suffered a hacker attack on Tuesday (14), as revealed by Bloomberg. In the attack, hackers managed to steal around US$1.5 million in funds from the fund.

According to the news, the stolen funds have not yet been recovered and the perpetrator remains at large. However, a source revealed that the company hired blockchain experts to investigate the theft.

Block Tower Capital is a manager with extensive infrastructure and more than US$1.5 billion in assets under management. But the attack highlights the need for even large companies to protect themselves against hackers and loss of funds.

However, the manager did not inform the exact amount that the hackers stole in the attack. But this was not the first action that resulted in major losses for the manager.

Exploration in a DEX

In February, Block Tower Capital lost almost $1.5 million in a hacker attack that occurred after the attacker exploited a decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator, Dexible.

This action resulted in the theft of TRU tokens worth almost $1.5 million. The tokens were in a wallet identified by Arkham Intelligence as belonging to Block Tower. Subsequently, Nansen also confirmed that the stolen wallet belonged to the manager.

Block Tower has several cryptocurrency funds, but the biggest one is its hedge fund, which was the target of this week’s attack. Interestingly, the company closed its “market neutral” crypto fund last year due to a dearth of investment opportunities.

In addition to the Block Tower exploit, a lesser-known decentralized lending protocol called Sonne Finance also suffered an attack on Wednesday. In this case, losses reached US$20 million.

In its report, Sonne stated that its team discovered the issue 25 minutes after the exploit occurred. Although they were unable to recover the funds, the protocol investigates who was responsible for the theft.

In the case of Block Tower, the investigation into the identity of the criminal is still ongoing and the management company hopes to recover all or part of the stolen funds.