Hong Kong-based Gate.io is in the hot seat as blockchain sleuths and on-chain analysts dig into its past and present. The exchange has also made some questionable transactions as of late, which have raised red flags.
On Nov. 15, Lookonchain posted some revealing data on the Gate.io exchange. The issue arose with the hacking of Gate.io in April 2018, resulting in a loss of $230 million.
Apparently, one of the first moves the exchange made was to try to cover this up. Crypto sleuth ‘ZachXBT’ highlighted this in response to Gate.io founder Lin Han on Nov. 15:
You talk about the importance of security but how about you finally disclose @gate_io was quietly hacked by NK for $230m on April 21 2018 & how you actively kept this hidden from customers/public No one in the space should trust anything you say after how that mess was handled https://t.co/0I3t2TnG3M pic.twitter.com/RfESOX2leD — ZachXBT (@zachxbt) November 15, 2022
Looking Into Gate.io
Lookonchain delved into the reserves that Gate.io holds to discover even more discrepancies.
It analyzed the exchange’s four wallets on Ethereum and found that Gate.io only has $479 million in reserve assets.
There were 71 million of its native GT token worth $259 million and 3.1 trillion SHIB tokens worth $29 million. These two questionable assets made up more than 60% of the total reserves on Gate.io. Furthermore, only 21% of its assets were held in Ethereum and Tether (USDT).
A couple of spurious transactions were also highlighted. On Oct. 21, Gate.io received 320,000 ETH worth just over $400 million from Crypto.com . The exchange transferred a total of 284,975 ETH worth $359 million back to Crypto.com between Oct. 25 and Oct. 30.
Apparently, this was a mistaken transfer, but there was no mention of the outstanding 35,025 ETH. Lookonchain observed:
“Coincidentally, the time when the 320K ETH transfer occurred was so close to the time when Gate.io released the Proof of Reserve Evaluation Report.”
Will https://t.co/Q1M8T0O4yl be the next #FTX ? 1.
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