Crypto market maker Wintermute was hacked for about $160 million in its decentralized-finance operations, Chief Executive Evgeny Gaevoy said in a Tuesday tweet.
Wintermute’s centralized finance and over-the-counter operations are not affected, Mr. Gaevoy said, adding that the firm is “solvent with twice over that amount in equity left.”
“If you have a market-making agreement with Wintermute, your funds are safe,” he said. “There will be a disruption in our services today and potentially for [the] next few days and will get back to normal after.”
Hacks and exploits have become a common occurrence in decentralized finance, a parallel financial system in crypto that’s automated by software instead of executed by human intermediaries. Wintermute is one of the biggest liquidity providers in the crypto industry and the firm may be forced to pull back some in order to mitigate further risk from its loss, Marcus Sotiriou, an analyst at the digital asset broker GlobalBlock, said in a research note.
Mr. Gaevoy said the firm is still open to treating the hack as a “white hat” or ethical hacking and asks the attacker to get in touch.
