UFC sponsor Crypto.com suffers alleged $15 million hack

Crypto.com—the popular cryptocurrency exchange that spent $175 million to emblazon its brand logo on UFC fight kits for the next 10 years—has allegedly been…

By: Karim Zidan | 1 year ago
UFC sponsor Crypto.com suffers alleged $15 million hack
Bloody Elbow 2.0 | Anton Tabuena

Crypto.com—the popular cryptocurrency exchange that spent $175 million to emblazon its brand logo on UFC fight kits for the next 10 years—has allegedly been hacked.

The Singapore-based exchange announced Sunday that there were a “small number of users reporting suspicious activity on their accounts” and that the exchange would be pausing withdrawals while their team investigates the incident.

The next day, the company tweeted that it has restored withdrawal services for users and that “all funds are safe.” The statement was reiterated by Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek, who added that his company had strengthened its security infrastructure in response to the “incident.”

However, blockchain security and analytics company Peckshield revealed that Crypto.com actually lost approximately $15 million in ETH (the native cryptocurrency for the Ethereum blockchain). Peckshield also noted that half the stolen funds were laundered through Tornado Cash, a service that obscures crypto transactions in order to make them more difficult to trace.

Peckshield subsequently told respected outlet Decrypt that the true scale of the damage is “definitely worse.”

Crypto.com is the fourth largest centralized crypto exchange in the world, according to CoinGecko. The company has spent more than $1.4 billion in nearly a dozen sports sponsorship deals across Formula One, hockey, basketball, football, MMA and esports. The crypto exchange spent $700 million to rename the Staples Center—home of the LA Lakers—to Crypto.com arena, marking the most a corporate sponsor has agreed to pay on a stadium naming rights.

Most recently, the company faced ridicule over a dramatic TV commercial featuring Matt Damon that seemed to compare crypto investments with space travel.

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About the author
Karim Zidan
Karim Zidan

Karim Zidan is a investigative reporter and feature writer focusing on the intersection of sports and politics. He has written for BloodyElbow since 2014 and has served as an associate editor since 2016. He also writes for The New York Times and The Guardian. Karim has been invited to speak about his work at numerous universities, including Princeton, and was a panelist at the South by Southwest (SXSW) film festival and the Oslo Freedom Forum. He also participated in the United Nations counter-terrorism conference in 2021. His reporting on Ramzan Kadyrov’s involvement in MMA, much of which was done for Bloody Elbow, has led to numerous award nominations, and was the basis of an award-winning HBO Real Sports documentary.

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