Tornado Cash, a popular decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol, has suffered a crypto exploit that resulted in a sudden fall in its market price. According to data from CoinMarketCap, Tornado Cash’s value has dropped by 28.25% in the last 24 hours, following the news of the exploit. Initially, the token fell over 60% but found support in the $3.86 price region. Through a malicious governance proposal, the hacker gained control of Tornado’s Cash Governance, allocating 1.2 million votes to themselves. The hacker then moved a total of 483,000 TORN out of the Tornado Cash governance vault, worth about $2 million at the present market price of $4.5. Currently, there has been no official statement from Bitrue as the hacker deposited 6,000 TORN on the exchange and swapped the remaining 379,300 TORN on-chain for 375ETH. TORN investors have been urged to withdraw all their governance-locked funds from the project developers, and Binance has suspended TORN deposits until further notice. At the time of writing, TORN is trading at $4.5, with a 1.5% gain in the last hour. Looking at its broader performance, the DeFi token has seen 30.6% and 48.9% losses in the last 14 and 30 days, respectively.
Interestingly, prior to this heist, Tornado Cash played a different role concerning crypto heists. The protocol operates as a non-custodial cryptocurrency tumbler that mixes potentially identifiable or tainted cryptocurrency funds with others to cover the original trail of such funds. Due to this service, the DeFi project served as a money laundering tool in a couple of crypto heists, most notably the $625 million Ronin exploit in 2022, which saw around 2,000 ETH moved to Tornado Cash after the attack. As a result, TORN was blacklisted by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control, banning all US citizens from engaging with the protocol. Other crypto heists also involved the use of Tornado Cash in moving part of the stolen funds.
About the author - J-S Tremblay
I've been involved in the cryptocurrency world since 2016 and trading since 2019. I started Moon and Lambo in 2021. I'm passionate about crypto and love to share my knowledge. I hate bankers and I hope that cryptocurrency will change the financial world for the better. View full profile...
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