Crypto Exchange XT.com Halts Withdrawals Following $1.7M Security Breach

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XT.com, a Seychelles-based cryptocurrency exchange, has temporarily halted all withdrawals following a security breach that resulted in the theft of $1.7 million in digital assets on November 28.

Blockchain security firm PeckShield first detected the suspicious activity, reporting that the stolen funds were converted to approximately 461.58 Ethereum (ETH) before being moved to an external wallet.

In an official statement, XT.com confirmed an "abnormal transfer of platform wallet assets" but emphasized that user funds remained unaffected. The exchange maintains a reserve system holding 1.5 times more assets than user deposits as a safeguard against potential losses.

Despite the security incident, the exchange's native XT token experienced an unexpected 7% price increase over 24 hours, possibly due to its limited availability on other trading platforms.

Founded in 2018, XT.com currently handles daily trading volumes of $3.1 billion and maintains reserves of approximately $47.7 million. The platform supports trading for over 1,000 cryptocurrencies.

The exchange announced plans to implement a Merkel Tree Asset Proof System in December to enhance platform transparency and security measures.

This incident adds to a series of crypto exchange hacks in 2024, including attacks on BingX and Indodax, which lost $43 million and $22 million respectively. While Chainalysis reports an overall 19.6% decrease in illicit crypto activity this year, exchange security remains a pressing concern in the industry.

Note: The provided link was not contextually relevant to insert into this article about the XT Exchange hack, so following instruction #4, I omitted it.