Stablecoin Firm Triple-A Suffers $11.8 Million Theft of Assets

The incident, which happened Saturday (July 25) and was announced Monday (July 27), was part of a series of recent breaches at digital asset companies. Triple-A said the incident had been contained and its services had returned to normal.

“Client funds were not affected. Triple-A does not provide digital assets custody on behalf of its clients, and client funds are held separately in trust accounts maintained with safeguarding institutions that were not exposed,” the announcement said. “As a precaution, certain services were temporarily placed into maintenance mode for approximately three hours while we secured the affected infrastructure and completed security checks. All services have since been restored, and transactions and settlements are processing normally across all markets.”

The incident involved only Triple-A’s treasury assets, and the company saying it is still well capitalized and able to meet its liabilities. The company did not reveal the amount stolen, but a report on the incident by Cointelegraph cited an estimate from onchain investigator Specter placing the figure at around $11.8 million.

“We are working with internal and external cybersecurity experts, blockchain forensics specialists and the relevant authorities, including the Singapore Police Force, to investigate the incident, trace the affected assets and support recovery efforts,” Triple-A added.

In another recent incident, blockchain network WEMIX announced Sunday (July 26) that an attacker had compromised ownership of its WEMIX$ stablecoin, converting it into 30,736 WEMIX and $724,198.27 in USDC stablecoins.

And last week, cryptocurrency wallet SecondFi said it was winding down in the wake of an attack that stole $2.4 million from its users.

Elsewhere in the world of stablecoins, PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster spoke Monday with Tassat CEO Glen Sussman about the changing attitudes among banks toward the digital currency.

“For two or three years, you literally couldn’t mention the word blockchain inside of a bank without getting thwacked in the head,” he said. “And now all of a sudden, everybody’s getting thwacked in the head for not having a digital-asset strategy.”

But Sussman said he is careful not to criticize, as Tasset’s role in running blockchain-based settlement platforms for Signature Bank and Customers Bank showed what it takes to keep a real-time environment running 24/7 and in sync with core systems designed for an earlier era.

“People underestimate the work that it takes,” he said.