One of the leading crypto market makers and liquidity providers for both centralized and decentralized exchanges has been hacked for $160 million in DeFi operations. According to the CEO, CeFi and OTC operations are not affected.
The CEO also stated that every company and exchange that works with Wintermute should not worry about their funds, and there will be a disruption of Wintermute's services for the next few days.
Reportedly, 90 assets were hacked for a notional value of over $1 million, which means that a major sell-off most likely will not appear in certain markets. Only one asset with a notional value of more than $2.5 has been stolen. Gaevoy stated that they will contact the affected teams.
The CEO also understands that some lenders would like to recall their loans and the company can absolutely do that since it remains solvent, which means they are ready to repay loans to investors without having any issues with their operations.
The financial stability of Wintermute should allow it to avoid any issues with operations, considering the stability of the CeFi market, meaning that liquidity provision and market making to centralized exchanges remains intact, as does OTC trading.
Currently, some whitehat hackers might work in some ways that will help investors to partiallly regain their funds. Validators and miners are technically able to prevent stolen funds from moving on decentralized exchanges, which yet remains a complicated task.
Centralized exchanges will most likely mark stolen funds automatically to prevent their appearance on the market.
Alex Dovbnya
Yuri Molchan