Thank goodness the Monero blockchain remains secure and hasn’t been hacked yet

Dubai-based crypto exchange XT.com has suspended withdrawals after a hacker reportedly stole up to $1.7 million before converting it into ether (ETH).

A statement from XT this morning claims the exchange suffered an “abnormal transfer” of crypto from its platform wallet with the address 0xdb3ded7731c781224ec292e2163d9554c094fd7c.

“The amount involved in this incident is approximately 1 million USDT across 12 different currencies,” XT claimed.

However, the crypto security firm PeckShieldAlert reports that the exchange appears to have been hacked. It claims that the stolen funds were converted into 461.58 ETH, worth almost $1.7 million at the time of writing, and are sitting in an Ethereum address.

XT claims, “Our technical team is currently conducting an urgent investigation,” and noted it will release a “Merkel Tree Asset Proof System” in mid-December as a means of improving security and transparency.

It also stressed that the theft would not affect its users as its reserves are 1.5x larger than the user assets it holds. “These assets are owned by the platform and will not in any way harm the interests of our customers or users,” the exchange added.

Three hours ago, XT said it had to suspend coin withdrawals because of a “wallet upgrade and maintenance.”

The exchange claims to have 7.8 million registered users. Coingecko puts its 24-hour trading volume at almost $3.4 billion and claims it has almost $48 million in exchange reserves.

Lol, if the hacker converted $1.7M to Monero, the price would jump to $1,000 at an instant. He’d suffer huge slippage. Of course he’s not that dumb, to move funds using an extremely non-liquid asset…

It’s our own fault that even hackers aren’t using XMR. The volume is so tiny, it couldn’t support a single gas station on the Interstate. Monero’s joke at this point. A tool for privacy LARPers to flaunt their cipher-punk-ness.