HyperLiquid Sees $60M USDC Drain as North Korea Reportedly Investigates Perpetuals Exchange Operations

Addresses associated with North Korean hackers, believed to be testing the platform for vulnerabilities, have incurred losses exceeding $700,000, according to an analyst.

HyperLiquid, a decentralized exchange and layer-1 blockchain built for perpetual futures (perps), has seen a substantial outflow of USDC amid growing concerns that North Korean hackers are interacting with the platform. This was reported by Tay, a pseudonymous observer well-known for tracking North Korean threats to crypto protocols, in a post on X.

By 10:00 UTC on Monday, HyperLiquid experienced an all-time high outflow of $60 million in USDC, according to data from Hashed Official’s Dune-based tracker. USDC, the second-largest stablecoin by market capitalization, is primarily used as collateral on the platform. The exchange’s deposit bridge still holds $2.2 billion in USDC.

Tay reported that the addresses linked to North Korean hackers have accumulated losses surpassing $700,000 while trading on HyperLiquid. These actions suggest that the hackers may be testing the platform’s features in preparation for a future attack.

“DPRK doesn’t trade, it tests,” Tay commented.

CoinDesk reached out to HyperLiquid on X for comment regarding the outflows and the potential risk posed by North Korea.

Tay also revealed that they had reached out to HyperLiquid two weeks ago, offering their assistance to mitigate potential threats. “It’s important to note that these DPRK groups are the most sophisticated and rapidly evolving in terms of cyber tactics. They are highly inventive and persistent. They also manage to exploit 0days, such as the recent Chrome vulnerability,” Tay’s message to HyperLiquid read.

HyperLiquid has emerged as the dominant on-chain perpetuals exchange, representing over 50% of the total on-chain perpetual trading volume, which reached $8.6 billion in the past 24 hours.

The platform launched its native token, HYPE, on November 29. Since then, HYPE has surged over 600%, reaching $28.6, and briefly surpassed a $10 billion market cap. As of now, HYPE is ranked the 22nd largest cryptocurrency globally, according to Coingecko.