Crypto Lender Celsius Network CEO Confirms Losing Funds in $120.3 Million BadgerDAO Hack

Celsius Network, a popular crypto lender with $26.4 billion in assets as of Oct. 15, confirmed that the company was affected by the latest decentralized finance (DeFi) hack of BadgerDAO.

As we reported earlier this week, the lending platform BadgerFAO that offers yields with a focus on wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), lost $120.3 million in a front-end attack.

During an ask-me-anything (AMA) YouTube live stream on Friday, Celsius Chief Executive Officer Alex Mashinsky said the company “lost money” in the BadgerDAO but didn’t divulge just how much. Some have speculated that Celsius may have lost nearly 897 WBTC worth about $51 million at the time.

“It wasn’t a Celsius hack,” Mashinsky said. “It was a Badger hack, but some of the Celsius funds were there, so Celsius lost money. … But none of the Celsius members lost money.”

The CEO further said that they are working with the Badger team to recover the lost funds and are collaborating on the investigation.

Concurrently Badger is developing a plan to safely reactivate smart contracts. While a definitive timeline is not currently available, Badger will continue to post further information on this matter as it becomes available.

— ₿adgerDAO 🦡 (@BadgerDAO) December 3, 2021

The company also took to Twitter to explain that it was the Badger platform that had suffered an attack of unauthorized withdrawal of funds and that Celsius client and user assets were not affected.

Celsius Network also said that it is assisting the Badger team on the resolution and has already initiated a full scan of all Celsius DeFi wallets.

Its security team also identified a compromised withdrawal and “immediately shut down the attacker’s access to funds on the Badger platform.”

They have also traced the attacker and reported the information back to Badger.

“CelsiusNetwork also wanted to take this opportunity to remind our community to exercise extreme caution when interacting with DeFi platforms and when approving connections to the sites, apps, and smart contracts,” it said.

The company recently closed a $750 million Series B funding round while being targeted by several regulators in the US over alleged securities laws violations.