key findings
- Mark Cuban’s crypto wallet was hacked on September 15, 2023.
- The hacker drained around $900,000 worth of crypto from Cuban’s hot wallet.
- Cuban claims he has no idea how the hacker accessed his wallet.
- Crypto experts believe that Cuban must have made a mistake in getting his account hacked, such as signing a malicious transaction or somehow getting his private key compromised.
- This isn’t the first time Cuban has become a victim of crypto hack.
Mark Cuban is a renowned TV personality, investor, billionaire, and owner of the Dallas Mavericks. And, he is the latest victim of a planned hack attack. The news was first reported on September 15 at 8 p.m. UTC by independent blockchain investigator Wazz. He noticed unusual activity on Cuban’s wallet, named “mcuban” on OpenSea, which was inactive for five months, and soon all the funds were drained.
“Did Mark Cuban’s wallet just get drained? Wallet inactive for 160 days, and all assets just moved,” Wazz posted.
The transaction history on Etherscan showed multiple batches of assets, including Tether, Lido Staked Ether, and USD Coin withdrawn from the wallet. It all happened within merely ten minutes. Afterwards, another $2m worth of USDC was transferred from a wallet named Mark Cuban 2 to a different wallet.
Wazz thought Cuban was shuffling his assets to different wallets. But, after a few hours, the 65-year-old billionaire confirmed the news. The hacker also dumped ETH and MATIC after depositing funds on Coinbase. Here’s a breakdown of the transferred funds:
- 5.29 ETH ($8,730)
- 338,206 STETH ($557,680)
- 12,355 MATIC ($6,590)
- 7,020 RARI ($6,340)
- 4,860 USDT ($4,860)
- 4,338 ENS ($33,270)
- 175,040 USDC ($175,040)
Reportedly, the hacker drained around $900,000 worth of crypto from Cuban’s hot wallet. Cuban claimed he had no idea how the hacker accessed his wallet. He told DL News that he went to MetaMask for the first time after several months, and the hacker was probably waiting for this moment. Cuban suspected that he might have downloaded a fake version of MetaMask and fell victim to a phishing attack.
After realizing that funds were drained from his hot wallet, Cuban shifted his remaining assets to Coinbase Custody, which means he transferred the $2m worth of USDC. However, crypto experts believe that Cuban must have made a mistake in getting his account hacked, such as he might have signed a malicious transaction or somehow his private key got compromised. These suspicions are based on the fact that assets were directly withdrawn from his wallet.
This isn’t the first time Cuban has become a victim of crypto hack. In June 2021, he suffered a rug pull and lost an unspecified amount of funds after an algorithmic stablecoin project, Iron Finance, imploded due to a bank run. At that time, Cuban blamed himself for being lazy and not doing appropriate research.
“Even though I got rugged on this, it’s really on me for being lazy. The thing about DeFi plays like this is that it’s all about revenue and math and I was too lazy to do the math to determine what the key metrics were,” Cuban stated responding to the incident.
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