Wemade's virtual asset project WEMIX faced a large-scale hacking incident amounting to about 9 billion won (approximately 8.65 million), putting it at risk of a second delisting. Major exchanges have designated WEMIX as a watch-listed transaction.
The WEMIX Foundation announced on its official website that the virtual asset exchange service "Play Bridge Vault" suffered a malicious external attack on the 28th of last month, resulting in the abnormal withdrawal of 8,654,860 WEMIX coins. Calculated at the price of 1,020 won on the 28th of last month, this amounts to about 8.8 billion won.
The coins were deposited across seven overseas exchanges, including KuCoin, BitMart, Bybit, Bitget, HTX, Bit2Me, and MEXC. WEMIX acknowledged the attack and established an emergency task force immediately, but most of the stolen virtual assets were sold on the exchanges.
WEMIX noted that it is investigating the circumstances in cooperation with an external security specialist company, Tiori, but added that "it is difficult to provide detailed information until the investigation is complete to prevent potential exploitation."
As news of the hacking became known, the price of WEMIX significantly dropped. As of 4:20 p.m. on the 4th, WEMIX is trading at 710 won, down 19.77% from 24 hours earlier. On this day, major exchanges designated WEMIX as a watch-listed transaction.
Concerns are being raised in the industry about the possibility of WEMIX's second delisting. Previously, WEMIX was delisted from five major virtual asset exchanges due to discrepancies between the publicly disclosed circulation and the actual circulation in 2022. It was subsequently re-listed on major exchanges excluding Upbit, such as Bithumb, Coinone, Korbit, and Gopax.
The issue is that exchanges have established criteria stating that virtual assets involved in hacking incidents since July last year will not be listed. The Digital Asset Exchange Association (DAXA), which has the five major domestic virtual asset exchanges as members, includes a clause in its listing guidelines that prohibits the listing of virtual assets "involved in security incidents such as hacking of unknown cause."
In fact, DAXA members decided to delist Something (SSX) and Playdap (PLA), which had been hacked last year.