Hacked Indian crypto exchange CoinDCX launches unusually high bounty

After losing around $44 million in crypto assets in a hack this past weekend, Indian crypto exchange CoinDCX has launched its recovery bounty program, which is more than twice the size of usual bounties in the crypto industry.

The company said it’ll pay up to 25% of any recovered funds to anyone who can help trace and retrieve the stolen crypto assets and catch the criminals. If the company manages to recover all the lost funds, the total payout could reach $11 million. Usually, hacked crypto companies offer up to 10% rewards.

The exchange has already partnered with security experts from Sygnia, zeroShadow, and the Seal911 teams. As reported by Cybernews.com, the exchange has managed to track stolen funds that were routed through multiple hops before landing in two solana (SOL) and ethereum (ETH) wallets.

"More than recovering the stolen funds, what is important for us is to identify and catch the attackers, because such things shouldn’t happen again, not with us, not with anyone in the industry," Sumit Gupta, co-founder of CoinDCX, posted on X.

In the meantime, the platform said the loss has already been "absorbed" through the company’s reserves, and the exchange "remains financially strong and fully operational." It has also tightened security "to ensure this never happens again."

The company didn’t elaborate on how the hackers managed to compromise one of its accounts on a "partner exchange" and promised to share more details once the analysis is complete. The compromised account was used for operational liquidity.

Meanwhile, some exchange users complained about pricing issues on the platform following the hack, while the team said that "prices are gradually normalizing automatically."