CoinDCX Bleeds $44.2M in Brazen Crypto Heist—Attacker’s Trail Starts with Just 1 ETH

Crypto exchange CoinDCX gets rocked by a $44.2 million security breach—and the smoking gun? A single Ethereum transaction.

How a digital bank heist unfolds in 2025

The attacker left a breadcrumb trail even Hollywood hackers would facepalm at—tracing back to just 1 ETH ($3,200 at press time). Forensic teams are combing through blockchain ledgers while exchange execs perform the traditional 'funds are SAFU' ritual.

Security theater meets DeFi wild west

Insiders whisper about possible private key leaks, while skeptics note the exchange's 'enterprise-grade cold storage' claims now look about as solid as a meme coin whitepaper. The breach exposes the brutal irony of centralized exchanges begging for regulation while failing basic opsec.

Meanwhile, somewhere in crypto twitter...

CT pundits are already spinning this as 'proof of decentralization's superiority'—conveniently ignoring that $44.2M would bankrupt most DAOs twice over. The only certainty? Lawyers are minting fresh billable hours as we speak.

CoinDCX, one of India’s biggest crypto exchanges, has reportedly lost around $44.2 million in a suspected hack about 17 hours ago. The attacker is said to have started with just 1 ETH from Tornado Cash and later moved some of the stolen funds from solana to Ethereum.

Users note that CoinDCX has also taken down some trading pairs, canceled spot orders, and their Web3 wallet isn’t working either, leaving them with a lot of questions.

Hi everyone,

At @CoinDCX, we have always believed in being transparent with our community, hence I am sharing this with you directly.

Today, one of our internal operational accounts – used only for liquidity provisioning on a partner exchange – was compromised due to a… pic.twitter.com/L1kZhjKAxQ

Sumit Gupta, the co-founder and CEO of CoinDCX, confirmed in a recent X post that the platform suffered a security breach affecting one of its internal operational accounts used for liquidity on a partner exchange. He assured users that no customer funds were impacted, and all user assets remain SAFE in cold wallets. 

The issue was caused by a server compromise, but was quickly contained. He also shared that trading and INR withdrawals continue to function normally and the losses are being fully absorbed by CoinDCX’s own treasury. 

Sumit said their team is working with cybersecurity experts to fix the issue, recover funds, and launch a bug bounty program to improve security. He promised to keep the community updated and stressed the importance of staying transparent during incidents like this.