Tether, the company behind a dollar-pegged cryptocurrency widely used in the market's exchange trade, is claiming that its systems have been hacked and that $30 million worth of its tokens have been stolen.
In a post on the project's website (which has since been removed), Tether blamed a "malicious action by an external attacker" for the theft of $30,950,010 USDT yesterday. Originally launched as Realcoin and later rebranded, Tether aims to serve as a proxy for the US dollar that can be sent between exchanges, notably including Bitfinex, Poloniex and other markets without fiat trading.
In response, Tether said it would move swiftly to ensure these exchanges do not trade or otherwise introduce the stolen funds back into the cryptocurrency economy.
The company wrote:
"$30,950,010 USDT was removed from the Tether Treasury wallet on Nov. 19, 2017 and sent to an unauthorized bitcoin address. As Tether is the issuer of the USDT managed asset, we will not redeem any of the stolen tokens, and we are in the process of attempting token recovery to prevent them from entering the broader ecosystem."