On September 26, 2020, unknown hackers have obtained the private keys to Kucoin's hot wallets and stolen roughly 281$ million.
The stolen funds have been transferred to the following wallet addresses:
- 0xeb31973e0febf3e3d7058234a5ebbae1ab4b8c23 (ETH)
- 1NRsEQRg5EjmJHbPUX7YADVPcPzCQBkyU7 (BTC)
- 12FACbewf5Fy9nmeaLQtm6Ugo5WS8g2Hay (BTC)
- 1TYyommJW3uhjhcnHhUSuTQFqSBAxBDPV (BTC)
- LQtFoidy5TmLrPP77MZzgMRffqPsmRfMXE (LTC)
- r3mZvvHVLPtRWAujzBsAoXqH11jhwQZvzY (XRP)
- 15mC7zKbLyErSKzGRHpy6gyqS7GyRpWjEi (BSV)
- GBM3PJWNB5VKNOFXCDTTNXPMUNBMYTLAAPYDIIKLHUGMKX7ZGN2FNGFU (XLM)
- 1NRsEQRg5EjmJHbPUX7YADVPcPzCQBkyU7 (USDT)
- TB3j1gUXaLXXq2bstiSMfjQ9R7Yh9DdDgK (TRX)
Eventually, 84% of the stolen assets have been recovered by the company.
On April 24, unknown hackers have obtained access to KuCoin's Twitter account for 45 minutes. They have organized a fake giveaway scam, which resulted in 22 ETH/BTC transactions associated with the fake activity. The victims have lost 22,628 USDT; according to company's statement on Twitter, KuCoin is committed to reimburse them in full.
The bar plot below shows the ratio of scam-related mentions of KuCoin in Google News during 2022 (the total of 508 mentions was collected):
The pie chart below shows that, over 2022, 17,3% of Google News mentions of KuCoin were scam-related:
