Venezuela-focused neobank Kontigo pays back users after $340K USDC hack

by Axel Orn

Kontigo, the self-styled “financial sizable app” that permits customers in Latin The United States to dodge native inflation by saving and investing in “digital bucks” has been compelled to reimburse extra than 1,000 of its customers after hackers drained extra than $340,000 in USDC.

Based on Kontigo’s X yarn on Monday, the firm “detected an unauthorized acquire entry to that affected funds of some customers.”

Particularly, the attacker drained a whole of 340,905.28 USDC from 1,005 user accounts.

It has since assured customers that the refunds for affected accounts private now been processed.

The theft comes lower than a month after the startup, which describes itself as a “neobank” saw JP Morgan and payments firm Checkbook nick its acquire entry to to the US banking machine, blaming compliance dangers linked to Venezuela.

JP Morgan and Checkbook had supplied Kontigo with virtual accounts.

The firm’s woes private coincided with the extremely controversial militia operations by the US in Venezuela that saw the nation’s president, Nicolás Maduro, snatched from his Caracas predicament in a January 3 raid.

One of Kontigo’s predominant markets will private $60B in BTC

Earlier this month, a Polymarket dealer made $437,000 making a bet on Maduro’s exit correct hours earlier than he used to be captured, prompting current insider trading issues.

The Polymarket yarn, which used to be created in December, bet $32,000 that Maduro would be eradicated from energy by January 31.

Delta Power seized Maduro from his Caracas safehouse all the method in which via a tall-scale strike on the metropolis. The operation, which reportedly took months of planning, used to be before the whole lot scheduled to rob location in December.

Read extra: Venezuela had crypto for getting jet gasoline, now its president has lost his airplane

Many speculate that retain an eye on over the nation’s broad oil reserves will private played a segment in the operation, whereas an investigation by Whale Searching out has printed that the regime may per chance presumably per chance well additionally be sitting on $60 billion value of bitcoin (BTC).

Maduro’s opponent, María Corina Machado, praised BTC in 2024 as a “significant manner of resistance” in opposition to the nation’s dire financial collapse.

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