Around $48 million worth of cryptocurrency has been moved from wallets tied to Turkish exchange BtcTurk, raising concerns it may have hacked.
The incident involved large transfers of ether (ETH), Avalanche’s AVAX (AVAX), Arbitrum’s ARB (ARB), Base (BASE), Optimism’s OP (OP), Mantle
and Polygon’s MATIC (MATIC), with the bulk of the funds consolidating into just two recipient addresses.
BTCTurk said in an update on X that “unusual activity was detected” in the exchange’s hot wallets.
“As a precaution, cryptocurrency deposit and withdrawal transactions have been temporarily suspended. They will be reopened once the work is completed,” it said.
“The vast majority of assets are kept in secure cold wallets. Thanks to BtcTurk’s strong financial structure, users’ assets will not be affected by this situation.”
The assumed exploit or hack marks another blight on the crypto industry after crypto investors lost $3.1 billion to hacks and scams in the first half of this year, the largest of which was the $1.46 billion breach of rival exchange Bybit.
Blockchain monitoring system Cyvers flagged the activity, triggering alerts that suggested a targeted exploit rather than routine operational movements.
Cyvers added that it was in contact with Btcturk, which is taking “immediate action.”
UPDATE (Aug. 14, 15:26 UTC): Adds quote from BtcTurk’s X page, paragraph on crypto hacks in 2025.