DeFi Drama: $3.6M Vanishes 😱

Right. So, it appears someone decided decentralized finance wasn’t quite decent enough, and executed what is politely referred to as a “rug pull” on HyperVault. A disturbingly large amount of money – approximately $3.6 million, which is roughly equivalent to several small countries’ GDP, give or take – seems to have quietly slipped out the back door. On-chain detectives at PeckShield noticed, because that’s what they do. They notice things. Mostly alarming things. It’s a stressful job.

HyperVault: Less Vault, More…Vanishing Act?

PeckShield, via the medium of X (formerly known as Twitter, which, for the record, was already a fairly strange medium), alerted the populace to HyperVault’s little disappearing trick. Apparently, someone wasn’t feeling the joy of auto-compounding vaults anymore. Which, frankly, is understandable. Auto-compounding sounds exhausting. They absconded with a sum that would make a reasonably ambitious space program pause and reconsider its budget.

The stolen funds, after a brief stopover on Hyperliquid, were then whisked off to Ethereum, promptly converted into ETH, and then… deposited into Tornado Cash. Tornado Cash, you see, is where funds go to contemplate their life choices and generally become very difficult to trace. It’s the digital equivalent of a witness protection program, only for money. 🤷

The loot included a delightful assortment of tokens: UPUMP (worth $191,494 – a curiously named token, one notes), USDC ($107,358), WHYPE ($1.55 million – presumably named after excessive enthusiasm), and other bits and bobs. Adding insult to injury, HyperVault promptly deactivated all their social media accounts – the digital equivalent of saying “Don’t bother looking for us” with a shrug and a knowing wink. Very sporty.

A “rug pull,” for the uninitiated (and frankly, if you’re still uninitiated at this point, you’re being remarkably optimistic), is when developers decide their project is more trouble than it’s worth, take the money, and run. It’s the crypto equivalent of a magic trick, except instead of a rabbit, you lose your life savings. It’s remarkably common in DeFi and NFT spaces, largely because regulations tend to be… absent. Think of the Wild West, but with more complicated algorithms. 🤠

HyperVault, when it was still pretending to be a legitimate entity, offered “unmanaged” auto-compounding vaults. Which sounds like a good idea, until someone unmanages them right out of existence. They also had strategy adapters and keeper-bot harvests. Essentially, they promised to make your digital assets work hard…for them.

One X user, HypingBull (an excellent name, really), pointed out that they’d been yelling about HyperVault since September 4th. Apparently, the developers weren’t overly keen on, shall we say, *transparency*. They were told about audits when, in fact, no audits were happening. Which is…suboptimal. 🤨

I have just reached Pashov (blockchain audit firm) on Telegram, asking if Hypervaut is doing an audit via them. The answer was: “First time I hear the project with this name”. WTF? This is super suspicious. I am withdrawing all the funds from the protocol until the team clarifies what’s going on.

Sadly, people continued to deposit funds, lured by the promise of a frankly ridiculous 90% APR on HYPE tokens. Ninety percent! At that point, one should suspect it’s too good to be true, or possibly a Ponzi scheme disguised as a yield farm. But, hey, hope springs eternal, especially in the digital asset universe.

Remarkably, the HYPE token is currently trading at $42.89 (up 2.8% today, because, of course), despite everything. It’s down 25% in the past week, which, you know, relatively speaking, is probably fine. It’s all relative, isn’t it?

Is Crypto Still The Wild West? Asking For A Friend.

The total crypto market cap is now a rather substantial $3.8 trillion, but apparently, safety and security are still…optional extras. Phishing attacks surged in August 2025, affecting 15,230 people (seriously, people?) and costing them $12 million. And the THORChain Founder was recently relieved of $1.35 million by a deepfake Zoom and Telegram scam. Clearly, despite all the technological advancements, criminals still prefer the low-tech approach of simply lying to people. Go figure.

As for Bitcoin, it’s currently trading at $109,488, down 1.6% in the last 24 hours. Because of course it is. It always is.

2025-09-27 06:15

HyperVault: Less Vault, More…Vanishing Act?

Is Crypto Still The Wild West? Asking For A Friend.

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