According to ex-Coinbase exec Conor Grogan, Hyperliquid’s bridge has stopped processing withdrawals, with no activity for 21 minutes at the time of the post.
That said, he notes no evidence of prior large withdrawals that would indicate a major hack. Assets outside USDC may be unaffected, and deposits remain active.
The USDC bridge still holds roughly $4.5 billion, meaning most funds remain intact.
The pause could be precautionary since exchanges often halt withdrawals temporarily to prevent system issues or manipulations.
Grona also argues that it might also be a “clawback” measure to recover funds from potentially manipulative trades.
POPCAT mayhem
Earlier, someone withdrew $3 million USDC, a stablecoin pegged to the US dollar, from the OKX crypto exchange.
Around 14:45 CET, this person started longing the POPCAT memecoin, placing about $20 million worth of buy orders at $0.21 that were spread across multiple wallets to create a big buy wall and artificially support the price.
Their total long position eventually grew to $30 million across all wallets.
When they removed this 8-figure buy wall, the price immediately dropped.
The liquidation was so big that Hyperliquid took over the position.
POPCAT then dumped further in price, leading to a $4.9 million loss for Hyperliquid.
Eventually, Hyperliquid manually closed the position to stop additional losses. This is believed to be a delivered attempt to attack the platform, and the platform was forced to halt its Arbitrum bridge.
Some argue that Hyperliquid actually neglected to update POPCAT’s max leverage down from 10x and that created this vulnerability.