Key Insights:
- A hacker not too long ago drained the GMX decentralized alternate of $40 million in assorted cryptocurrencies.
- The hacker has begun returning funds after negotiations, inflicting a ten% worth enhance within the worth of $GMX.
- Regardless of the restoration, GMX continues to be liable to bearish affect as its worth threatens to interrupt under $10.
This week noticed an attention-grabbing flip of occasions when the hacker who drained $40 million from the GMX decentralized alternate returned the stolen funds. Stated occasion occurred after the GMX group supplied the hacker a $5 million white hat bounty, and right here’s how this incident led to an enormous GMX worth spike.
How GMX Was Attacked
The hack occurred on Wednesday and focused a liquidity pool on GMX v1, the primary model of the buying and selling platform on Arbitrum.
The attacker took benefit of a design flaw to control the worth of GLP tokens. This allowed them to siphon off a number of lessons of crypto property. On the time of the theft, the attacker made off with an estimated $40–42 million price of property.
Most of those included Ether (ETH) and FRAX, with all hope of recovering the funds showing to have been misplaced.
Nevertheless, the story took an surprising twist when blockchain safety agency PeckShield flagged an on-chain message from the attacker. Inside the message, the hacker casually wrote “Okay, funds can be returned later.”
Shortly after that message, the deal with labeled GMX Exploiter 2 started transferring funds again to GMX. Inside hours, over $9 million in ETH had been despatched to the restoration pockets specified by the GMX group.
#PeckShieldAlert #GMX Exploiter has returned 5.49M $FRAX to #GMX: Deployer pic.twitter.com/q4hi6DsAX1
— PeckShieldAlert (@PeckShieldAlert) July 11, 2025
This was adopted by two separate transfers of $5.5 million and $5 million in FRAX, respectively. As of the most recent replace, roughly $40.5 million price of the stolen property had been returned. These embrace 10,000 ETH (valued at round $30 million) and $10.5 million in FRAX.
A Take care of Circumstances
The GMX group had beforehand acknowledged the attacker’s technical talent and prolonged an olive department through a public message on X. They supplied a $5 million white hat bounty in alternate for the return of not less than 90% of the stolen funds.
The remaining 10% may very well be stored as a reward.
👀Appears just like the @GMX_IO exploiter could be making ready to return the funds.https://t.co/K0HKPestLj pic.twitter.com/oE2S9dMIW7
— SlowMist (@SlowMist_Team) July 11, 2025
“You’ve efficiently executed the exploit; your skills in doing so are evident to anybody wanting into the exploit transactions,” the GMX group wrote. “The white hat bug bounty of $5 million continues to be out there.”
GMX additionally made it clear that the bounty would permit the hacker to spend the funds freely with out worry of repercussions.
GMX Recovers 10%
The token rallied by 10% on 11 July, when the hacker agreed to return the stolen funds. Nevertheless, earlier than this, the GMX token had been in a downtrend since hitting a excessive of $46.8 in early December of final 12 months.
Between then and now, the cryptocurrency has been down by round 72%, crashing to a brand new low of $10.12 as of 9 July. This $10.12 worth stage seems to be a robust help zone. Beforehand, it held GMX up in an earlier crash on 6 April.
This stated, the one factor retaining GMX up from a bearish spiral downwards is the vary between $10 and $10.12.
To date, the ten% worth enhance on 11 July has offered the bulls a point of aid from this spiral. Nevertheless, the menace nonetheless stays. GMX is at present hovering beneath its 200-day EMA. Because of this the bears are in command of issues in the mean time.
That is additional bolstered by the place of the RSI beneath the impartial line. In conclusion, the Fibonacci retracement ranges present that GMX must reclaim the $15.2 worth stage quickly, or proceed downwards underneath the affect of its bears.