- BtcTurk crypto exchange moves to delist Terra Luna Classic (LUNC).
- Security audit firm CertiK rounded up the monetary damage to $90M.
- BtcTurk’s spontaneous announcement enrages the LUNC community.
BtcTurk, the largest Turkish cryptocurrency exchange, was hit by a massive cyber attack over the weekend. The exchange claimed that one out of every ten crypto balances in its hot wallets were affected and that LUNC would be delisted. Famed on-chain detective ZachXBT chimed in to estimate a total damage of $54.20 million.
Further Research Hints at $90M Missing
ZachXBT counted 1.96 million Avalanche (AVAX) tokens in a suspicious crypto address. The address was used to siphon digital assets from BtcTurk and later swapped into assets on Coinbase and THORChain.
Upon closer examination by blockchain security audit company CertiK, it was determined that over $90 million of crypto funds were drained from the platform.
The major security breach triggered a massive sell-off of certain cryptocurrencies that the fraudsters managed to get their hands on. Besides the 1.96M AVAX coins spotted by ZachXBT, 350,000,000,000 Terra Luna Classic (LUNC) tokens were drained from BtcTurk’s treasury.
These LUNC coins, equaling $28.55 million, were moved between crypto wallets in an attempt to conceal the origin of the funds. Upon further investigation by DailyCoin, the fraudsters first cashed out 325B LUNC tokens from one of BtcTurk’s hot wallets. These digital assets were conveyed to multiple decoy wallets on Terra Classic’s chain before finally being deposited to Binance.
Terra Luna Classic Dumps 20% After Hack
Prominent Terra Luna Classic community members are tying the $90 million BtcTurk hack to LUNC’s plunge last weekend, but the community is divided on how it will affect performance. LUNC plummeted to a three-month low of $0.00007362 on June 22.
LUNC’s association with the hack also contributed to its shrinking market cap, which dipped by nearly $100 million due to the incident.
However, Terra Luna Classic’s funding and burning mechanism offered a silver lining in this story. According to the newly implemented LUNC burn tax rules, every transaction contributes to the Community Pool (CP), a long-term fund aimed at pursuing LUNC’s restoration plans.
The devastating BtcTurk hacking incident poured 800,000,000 LUNC tokens into the CP, which can be allocated to new development projects. The hackers’ overcomplicated transactions to erase traces of malicious activity have contributed to LUNC’s daily burns, adding a hefty 6.5B LUNC to the community’s bonfire.
As of press time, Terra Luna Classic is trading at $0.00008052, up 7.6% over the past 24 hours. Despite the soft rebound rally, LUNC has been 23% down in the last two weeks. The community is left on edge about the coin’s future, as portrayed in a question in LUNC Ninja’s thread: “Has the sell-off by this entity ended?”
On the Flipside
- A large part of the LUNC community is worried about more potentially incoming delistings, specifically from Binance.
- As Binance is overseen by the Forensic Risk Alliance (FRA), this could lead to LUNC delisting due to the coin’s ‘unregistered security’ status to mitigate legal repercussions.
Why This Matters
Blockchain security has been a hotly debated topic in 2024, while Turkey’s top crypto exchange hack is likely to have a global impact due to Turkey being a frontrunner in crypto adoption.
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