Glossary
KuCoin Hack (2020)
The September 2020 exchange breach that stole ~$281M from KuCoin's hot wallets across Bitcoin, Ethereum, and ERC-20 tokens — nearly all later recovered.
On September 25, 2020, KuCoin disclosed an exploit of its hot wallets, with attackers stealing approximately $281 million in BTC, ETH, USDT, and various ERC-20 tokens. KuCoin's CEO Johnny Lyu attributed the breach to leaked private keys.
KuCoin coordinated with other exchanges and token projects to freeze stolen funds where possible, and many ERC-20 issuers upgraded contracts to invalidate stolen tokens. Approximately 84% of the stolen funds were recovered. The incident demonstrated both the risk of hot-wallet concentration and the limited trust-minimization of many ERC-20 tokens.