$60M Goes Missing In Dog-Themed DeFi Project's Token Sale

Investors pooled in around $60 million to a newly-launched crypto project’s token sale, but the funds appear to have disappeared overnight.

What Happened: AnubisDAO is a dog-themed DeFi project inspired by the Egyptian god of death, Anubis. The project’s token sale on Oct. 28 saw investors pool 13,556.36 ETH worth $60 million in return for Anubis Tokens ANKH/USD.

However, users soon discovered that the funds were sent to a different wallet address around 20 hours into the token sale.

The price of ANKH tokens fell to zero after all liquidity was removed from the project.

“We, in crypto, tend to have a ‘buy first, do research later,’ mentality,” said one investor to CNBC after losing as much as $470,000 in one day.

According to a detailed timeline of the events published by one of the project’s developers “0xSisyphus,” all evidence points to an inside job by one of the founding members.

Beerus, a pseudonymous developer who was tasked with deploying the funds in the liquidity bootstrapping protocol, claimed to have fallen victim to a phishing attack after opening a malicious link from a PDF.

0xSisyphus reported that security researchers had found no malicious content in the PDFs mentioned.

Law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and Hong Kong have reportedly been notified of the incident. 0xSisyphus said he has notified crypto exchange Coinbase Global Inc COIN of a series of Ethereum ETH/USD transfers made by the suspect’s wallet address.

Photo by Egor Myznik on Unsplash