DeFiance Capital founder loses $1.6M in hot wallet hack

cointelegraph.com:

Founder of major crypto investment firm DeFiance Capital, “Arthur_0x”, has suffered a hack on one of his hot wallets resulting in the loss of more than $1.6 million in nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and crypto.

In a tremendous show of support, the crypto community has come to his aid to help retrieve the stolen items as he asked people to blacklist the hacker’s wallet. Several individuals on Twitter have attempted to determine exactly how the hack occurred and where the hacker gained access to his wallets.

NFT community member “Cirrus” went as far as buying two of the stolen Azuki NFTs and deciding to return them to Arthur at cost. Cirrus told Cointelegraph today that he:

Cirrus added that this “isn’t the first time” this has happened to him. He said, “I could easily go sell them for 6-8 ETH profit, but it just isn’t right.” His profile states that he has been a victim of rug pulls three times before, which likely guided his sympathies for his fellow victim.

Yo @Arthur_0x two of my bids got accepted on your hacked Azukis. Willing to get them back to you at cost. DM me pic.twitter.com/cBIX9QNLNu

A rug pull is when a crypto or NFT project suddenly closes down and the value of their token or NFT plummets without prior warning. In most cases, rug pulls are confirmations of a scam.

In total, Arthur appears to have lost 78 different NFTs from five collections, mostly Azukis. He also lost 68 Wrapped Ether (WETH), 4,349 Staked DYDX (stkDYDX), and 1,578 LooksRare (LOOKS) tokens. The hacker began moving assets at about 12:30 am UTC, then promptly put all the NFTs up for bid on the OpenSea NFT marketplace. As of the time of writing, the hacker’s wallet held 545 ETH worth about $1.6 million.

This hack highlights the importance of operational