China-based Bitcoin (BTC) mining giant Bitmain has sued an anonymous hacker for the alleged theft of cryptocurrency worth $five.5 million from Bitmain's business relationship on Binance in April, according to a lawsuit filed with the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington at Seattle on Nov. 7.

As stated in the court certificate, an unknown hacker, referred to every bit "John Doe" in the example, managed to take over Bitmain's Binance account and used stored Bitcoin to manipulate the price of altcoin Decentraland (MANA) and and so steal the profits.

Bitmain says in the court document that the amount of the company's losses "exceeds" $five.5 million in "Bitcoin and other digital avails," and specifying that the defendant was able to steal "approximately 617 BTC." The certificate cites that the unauthorized action took place on April 22, when Bitcoin was trading at around $viii,935.

The document also explains that every bit a part of the "scam," the unknown hacker used two of their own accounts on now-second largest crypto exchange Binance, too equally on Bittrex, with around 2.3 million MANA already caused on Bittrex. "John Doe" reportedly placed purchase orders from Bitmain'due south digital wallet offering to buy MANA "and other digital assets" with Bitmain's bitcoins at a cost that was "far above the going market place charge per unit." The accused also allegedly further artificially inflated MANA'southward price by using Bitmain'due south BTC to buy Ethereum (ETH), which was then used to buy MANA.

Co-ordinate to the lawsuit, the hacker farther carried out a number of orchestrated trades in the reverse management between BTC and MANA from Bitmain'southward wallet and their own, eventually reportedly completing the theft by transferring BTC from their Bitmain account "ultimately into a digital wallet on the Bittrex cryptocurrency trading platform."

In Mid-October, Cointelegraph reported that losses acquired past hacks of crypto exchanges in the first nine months of 2022 have exceeded the numbers for the whole year of 2022 by 250 percent, with $927 one thousand thousand stolen.