Bitrue further said that it tackled the issue right away, permitting the platform to avoid further draining of funds

Hackers drained $23mln from a wallet belonging to Singapore-based crypto exchange Bitrue earlier Friday, the firm said in a tweet.

After added security measures, the firm plans to restart withdrawals on April 18.

Bitrue further said that it tackled the issue right away, permitting the platform to avoid further draining of funds. The exchange insisted that the impacted hot wallet accounted for less than 5 per cent of the exchange’s total cash.

Bitrue did not detail how the attack took place.

We have identified a short exploit in one of our hot wallets at 07:18 UTC on April 14, 2023. We were able to manage this issue swiftly and stopped more exploit of funds, the crypto exchange stated, saying the team was looking into the situation.

The exchange officials also declared refund for all recognisable users who were impacted by the incident.

The currencies affected on the attacked hot wallet included Ether, Shiba Inu, Quant, Gala, Holo, and Polygon, as per the company.

Bitrue was founded in Singapore in 2018. It is a significant centralized crypto currency exchange that trades nearly $2bln in crypto every day on average.

Hackers have shifted away from conventional centralized exchanges towards DeFi exchanges during the past few years.

As per Chainalysis data, crypto exchange hacks were only 3 per cent of all crypto drained in the first quarter of last year. At the same time, decentralized finance protocols were responsible for 97 per cent of the stolen assets.

Around 97 per cent of all crypto currency stolen in the first quarter of last year was taken from decentralized finance protocols, up from 72 per cent in 2021 and only 30 per cent in 2020. Centralized exchanges, which were once a leading destination for stolen funds, dropped out of favour, getting less than 15 per cent of the total.

This is probably because of exchanges’ adoption of Anti-Money Laundering and Know Your Customer processes, which threaten the anonymity of cyber criminals.