Hinkal says attacker drained about 797,000 USDC from Ethereum contracts and routed funds through Tornado Cash and THORChain

The protocol said only Ethereum-related pools were affected, contracts have been paused, and impacted users will be repaid in full on a 1:1 basis.

BTC

ETH

USDC

22d ago

Fact Check

Multiple independent sources corroborate all key elements of the claim. Intellectia reports the exact ~$797K USDC drain from Hinkal's Ethereum pool with Tornado Cash and THORChain routing, contracts paused, and 1:1 full reimbursement pledged. CryptoTimes confirms only Ethereum-related exposure and Tornado Cash/THORChain laundering with contracts paused. DEXTools provides on-chain forensics confirming the drain, routing, and mechanism. The slight variance between $797K (exact drain) and ~$820K (total value including swaps) is consistent across reporting. No conflicting evidence was found.

Summary

Hinkal said an attacker extracted about 797,000 USDC from its Ethereum contracts, swapped the funds for about 454 ETH, then sent about 410 ETH to Tornado Cash and bridged the remaining 44.67 ETH to Bitcoin via THORChain. The protocol said only Ethereum-related pools were affected and that all contracts have been temporarily paused. Hinkal also said affected users will be repaid in full 1:1, with compensation details to follow. The fund movements reflect a common post-exploit pattern in crypto, where assets are converted into more liquid tokens and then routed through privacy or cross-chain infrastructure to complicate tracing.

Terms & Concepts

Tornado Cash: A crypto mixing protocol used to obscure onchain transaction trails.
THORChain: A cross-chain liquidity protocol that lets users move value between different blockchains.
bridged: Transferred assets or their value from one blockchain network to another.