Celsius Reportedly Affected in Exploit of DeFi Protocol BadgerDAO
- Hackers stole $115 million from users of the bitcoin-focused Badger DAO on Wednesday
- Like many crypto companies, Celsius is not FDIC insured nor a federally regulated bank
The Wednesday $115 million hack to the bitcoin-focused DeFi protocol BadgerDAO appears to have impacted Celsius Network to the tune of approximately $54 million, according to on-chain data from etherscan.
While the on-chain data does not definitively prove that the funds belonged to the crypto lender, the wallet that was impacted was seeded by a series of wallets that originates with Celsius.
Initial reports showed that a wallet linked to Celsius had 896 wrapped bitcoins stolen.
Celsius’ losses at this time could amount to approximately $54 million USD, a little under one-half of the total amount stolen from BadgerDAO.
When Blockworks reached out to Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky for comment on Thursday evening he said the company would provide a statement on Friday, but did not comment further.
BadgerDAO has hired data forensic experts Chainalysis to investigate the hack and is progressing with internal and external investigations, according to a recent tweet.
“As of right now, we have nothing further to share outside of the recent post. We will continue to provide updates as they come available,” a BadgerDAO admin said to Blockworks Thursday night.
As Blockworks reported early Thursday, the hack on BadgerDAO didn’t appear to be an attack on the protocol itself. Instead, the hackers went after the web interface connecting the protocol to the users’ wallets.
Many BadgerDAO Discord users reported that when their wallets interacted with BadgerDAO, they were hit with requests for additional permissions and then transferred tokens to wallets controlled by the hackers, Blockworks reported.
As with many cryptocurrency companies, neither BadgerDAO nor Celsius are federally regulated banks or FDIC-insured.
It’s been a wild two weeks for Celsius. On Nov. 24, the company announced it had expanded its Series B From $400 million to an oversubscribed $750 million. On Nov. 29, the company suspended its Chief Financial Officer Yaron Shalem due to external fraud and sexual assault allegations.
This is a developing story.
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Liz CoyneManaging Editor
Liz has been a writer and editor for over 30 years covering a wide range of topics including robotics, technology, telecommunications, finance, business, politics and more. She began her career at Carnegie Mellon University where she wrote about the university’s alumni, is published in McSweeney’s Internet Tendencies, and has a BA and MA in creative writing. She lives in the Chicagoland area.
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Jacquelyn MelinekJacquelyn Melinek is a Houston-based reporter covering digital asset funds and markets. She previously reported on energy markets for S&P Global Platts and Bloomberg News and is published in over 65 news outlets. She graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a degree in Media and Journalism.
