$1M worth stolen MATIC has been returned to Eterbase by ChangeNow

ChangeNOW has finally returned approximately $1 million in MATIC coins that were part of coins stash nicked in 2020 from crypto exchange Eterbase. Robert Auxt has officially confirmed this. 

This is the first such restoration for Eterbase, which was hacked for approximately $5.4 million in cryptocurrencies, causing the platform to file for bankruptcy in October of this year.

When did the Polygon(Matic) hack occur?

Eterbase suffered a security breach on September 7, 2020, resulting in the loss of roughly $5.4 million in several cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Polygon (MATIC).

On September 8, ChangeNOW halted a 600,000 MATIC swap transaction, which the exchange promptly froze since it originated from a banned address detected by the platform’s anti-money laundering system.

The money on ChangeNOW remained frozen while the platform awaited a formal claim from the holder of the hacked wallet.

According to the ChangeNOW terms of service, a complainant has up to a year to request the discharge of the blocked assets. Eterbase, on the other hand, supposedly failed to activate an application for the funds’ return, prompting ChangeNOW to contact the exchange.

The monies’ recipient was verified with the help of the Slovak Police Department, and the 600,000 MATIC stolen was restored, even though its worth had increased by 90 times in the previous year.

Such trust and support are required for cryptocurrency

MATIC was trading at roughly $0.02 per unit at the time of the breach, implying that the recovered coins are valued at around $1 million at current values of $1.73. This is roughly 90 times the cost of the coins in September 2020, which was $10,950.

In 2019, ChangeNOW assisted in the recovery of up to 500,000 XRP stolen from GateHub. In October of this year, it refunded $15 million in COMP incorrectly allocated to Compound Finance users due to a system failure.