Sky Mavis CEO admitted to withdrawing 3 million USD before announcing the Ronin hack

Explaining his actions, CEO Trung Nguyen said that this is a measure to protect the company’s finances and support liquidity for users.

Trung Nguyen (Nguyen Thanh Trung) – The CEO of Sky Mavis, the company behind the leading P2E (play for money) crypto game Axie Infinity, recently admitted to withdrawing the equivalent of $3 million in tokens from the platform before announcing to the public. community about the case.

At the end of March, the Ronin bridge – Ethereum’s sidechain built specifically for Axie Infinity to help move digital assets in the game, was hacked. 173,000 ETH and 25 million USD Coin (USDC) with total damage up to 622 million dollars. The attack was so severe that it made Axie Infinity the biggest crypto hack of all time.

With the help of Youtuber Asobscompany Bloomberg analyzed blockchain data and discovered that a Chinese crypto wallet used to transfer about 3 million USD worth of AXS tokens from the Ronin bridge to the Binance exchange.

The transfer took place just 3 hours before Sky Mavis revealed the hack and closed access until the end of June.

Kalie Moore, a spokesperson for Sky Mavis, said:

“At that time, we believed that the company would be in a better position and choice if there were more AXS on Binance. We would have the flexibility to secure loans and capital if needed.”

Moore added, the money was transferred from Trung’s own wallet to prevent many investors from short selling AXS after hearing bad news. At the same time, he affirmed that the founder did not transfer the money for any other motive.

Share on TwitterCEO Trung Nguyen said the token transfer took place after Sky Mavis management discussed with the exchange, as the company plans to help provide liquidity to users while restoring demand.

“I heard a lot of people say this is insider trading speculation,” the CEO said. “These accusations are baseless and untrue. In fact, the founding team even sent $7.5 million from a multi-sig wallet to the Ronin Network before closing the bridge to avoid being tracked and exploited by short sellers.

The Ronin cyber hack took place on March 23 but went undetected for days. On March 29, the company announced to users. Hackers took away 173,600 Wrapped Ethereum (WETH) and 25.5 million USDC, worth a total of $622 million at the time.

The US Treasury Department then accused Lazarus Group, a hacker group with links to the North Korean government, as the culprit.

On April 6, Sky Mavis announced that it had raised an additional $ 150 million in funding to compensate users for damage. Ronin Bridge also reopened on June 28th and all users have been refunded. However, Sky Mavis still hopes to recover the stolen property.

Axie Infinity used to be the most successful GameFi project with NFT transaction volume exceeding 4 billion USD. At its peak in 2021, millions of people were playing Axie Infinity every day. However, around the end of 2021, the game’s Play-to-Earn economy began to “shake” and quickly slipped after the March 2022 hack.

Despite making a lot of efforts to revive, the once GameFi empire is still turned away by users. Currently, the price token AXS just over $17 per coin, losing more than 90% of its value from its peak in November 2021. Meanwhile, token SLP priced at $0.004, down 99% from its all-time high.