Tether has suffered a devastating cryptocurrency blow, coming forward and claiming that malicious activity resulted in the loss of its reserve currency worth in the region of $30 million.
To be exact, the company stated that $30,950,010 had been stolen from the Tether Treasury wallet on the 19th of 2017. According to the company, the currency was then transferred to an unauthorised bitcoin address.
News of the incident has hit the soaring price of bitcoin, while also having an impact on that of the Ethereum cryptocurrency.
In a statement the company said: “Yesterday, we discovered that funds were improperly removed from the Tether treasury wallet through malicious action by an external attacker. Tether integrators must take immediate action, as discussed below, to prevent further ecosystem disruption.”
The currency is directly linked to the dollar, at a one dollar to one unit ratio, linked to currency held in the company’s reserves. This dynamic makes it imperative that the tokens to not re-circulate.
“As Tether is the issuer of the USDT managed asset, we will not redeem any of the stolen tokens, and we are in the process of attempting token recovery to prevent them from entering the broader ecosystem. The attacker is holding funds in the following address: 16tg2RJuEPtZooy18Wxn2me2RhUdC94N7r,” Tether informed users.
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The company appears to have a grip on the situation, in a position to identify the stolen tokens that link to US dollars. To ensure the problem is finalised, the company has outlined advice for users.
“If you receive any USDT tokens from the above address, or from any downstream address that receives these tokens, do not accept them, as they have been flagged and will not be redeemable by Tether for USD.”
The full extent of the reputational damage of the heist is yet to be seen, but it may be severe considering that Tether claims to offer world-class security.
In the statement, the company outlined its plan for action for dealing with the problem: “The tether.to back-end wallet service has been temporarily suspended. A thorough investigation on the cause of the attack is being undertaken to prevent similar actions in the future. We are providing new builds of Omni Core to the community.”
