The biggest cryptocurrency heist of all time happened amidst the most bizarre of circumstances . Over US $ 611mn of assets were stolen from the Poly Network DeFi platform . There then followed a very public conversation between the hacker and the victim , which played out on Twitter and resulted in all the funds being returned less than two weeks later .

$ 611mn is stolen

Poly Network announces the attack on Twitter in the following tweet : “ Important Notice : We are sorry to announce that # PolyNetwork was attacked on @ BinanceChain @ ethereum and @ 0xPolygon .”

The assets are transferred to hacker ' s addresses and consist of : $ 273mn Ethereum $ 253mn BSC $ 85mn Polygon

August 10th

$ 260mn is returned

The hacker responds to Poly Network ’ s appeal from the previous day with a message of their own , which states they carried out the hack to reveal the network ’ s vulnerabilities . Poly Network announces on Twitter that $ 260mn of the stolen funds has been returned but that $ 353mn remains outstanding .

August 11th

Mr Whitehat

The hacker reveals his nickname as Mr Whitehat . News agencies report further attempts to return the stolen funds have been made . Coindesk says the hackers have attempted to transfer a portion of the assets from one of the three wallets into liquidity pool Curve . fi . However , the transaction is rejected . An estimated $ 100 million is also moved out of another of the wallets and is deposited into liquidity pool Ellipsis Finance .

August 12th

14 December 2021