Today in crypto, GMX has paused trading after a liquidity pool exploit drained over $40 million. Bybit has confirmed details of the upcoming Pump.fun token sale, and the US has sanctioned a North Korean IT worker ring accused of targeting American companies.
GMX halts trading, token minting following $40M exploit
The GMX protocol halted trading on GMX V1 after a liquidity pool suffered an exploit on Wednesday, leading to $40 million in funds being stolen and sent to an unknown wallet.
GMX V1 is the first version of the GMX perpetual exchange deployed on the Arbitrum network. The attacked pool is a liquidity provider for the GMX protocol with a basket of underlying digital assets including Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH) and stablecoins, according to the GMX team.
The protocol has also announced a temporary suspension in minting and redemption of GLP tokens on both Arbitrum and the layer-1 Avalanche network to protect against any additional fallout from the cybersecurity exploit.
Users of the platform were instructed to disable leverage and change their settings to disable GLP minting.
Blockchain security company SlowMist attributed the exploit to a design flaw that allowed hackers to manipulate the GLP token price through the calculation of the total assets under management.
Pump.fun token sale confirmed, Europe-based users barred: Bybit
Bybit has confirmed details of the much-awaited Pump.fun token sale, revealing that users registered through its European Union-regulated platform, Bybit.eu, will not be able to participate, citing compliance with the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA).
The public sale of PUMP, the native token of the no-code memecoin launchpad Pump.fun, will open on Saturday at 14:00 UTC and run through Tuesday, according to a Wednesday press release shared with Cointelegraph.
A total of 150 billion PUMP tokens, 15% of the 1 trillion total supply, will be offered at a fixed price of $0.004 USDT per token.
Bybit, currently the world’s second-largest crypto exchange by trading volume, is the only major platform participating in the sale, the announcement said. A number of other exchanges will also support the token sale.
Bybit will support subscriptions in USDt (USDT), USDC (USDC), Solana (SOL) and bbSOL, providing access to both stablecoins and Solana-native assets.
Bybit has become the second major crypto exchange to reveal details about the upcoming PUMP token sale, following a slip by Gate.io. On Tuesday, Gate.io briefly published a page outlining a $600 million PUMP token sale, which was quickly taken down.
In a Wednesday post on X shortly after the sale was revealed by Bybit, Pump.fun officially announced the token sale. “Our plan is to Kill Facebook, TikTok, and Twitch. On Solana,” the platform wrote.
Pump.fun, launched in January 2024, quickly rose to prominence for enabling users to create and trade memecoins with zero coding skills. The platform’s gamified interface and viral mechanics have driven a wave of onchain experimentation on Solana, transforming casual users into active token creators and traders.
US sanctions North Korean IT worker ring over crypto thefts
The US Treasury on Tuesday sanctioned two people, a North Korean and Russian man, along with four entities involved in what it says was a North Korea-run IT worker ring that infiltrates US crypto companies aiming to exploit them.
The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) slapped sanctions on the North Korea-based Song Kum Hyok for allegedly stealing US citizens’ information to use as aliases and giving the information to hired foreign IT workers who would seek employment at US companies.
OFAC also sanctioned the Russian national Gayk Asatryan for allegedly using his four Russia-based companies to employ dozens of North Korean IT workers. OFAC said North Korea aims to bankroll its missile programs by deploying a thousands-strong workforce of highly skilled IT workers all over the world.
“Treasury remains committed to using all available tools to disrupt the Kim regime’s efforts to circumvent sanctions through its digital asset theft, attempted impersonation of Americans, and malicious cyber-attacks,” said Treasury Deputy Secretary Michael Faulkender.
North Korea has been notorious for its high-profile hacks such as the $1.5 billion exploit against crypto exchange Bybit exploit in February, but TRM Labs said the nation is starting to shift to “deception-based revenue generation, including IT worker infiltration.”