Crypto Carnage: GMX’s $40M Disaster Unveils a Theatre of Digital Absurdities

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Key Takeaways

  • Yet another tragic chapter in the endless novel of crypto mishaps: GMX, having misplaced $40 million (perhaps in its existential pocket?), now finds company among the chorus of digital victims whose collective losses this year amount to an almost comical $2.5 billion. Hacker groups—those eternal Dostoevskian villains—grow bolder, regulators sharpen their quills, and security experts weep quietly into the abyss.

Does the coin bleed? GMX, the decentralized exchange, confirms it too has stepped upon the rake of fate, suffering a breach in its V1 GLP pool on Arbitrum [ARB]—and $40 million, like so many stolen Tsarist jewels, are simply…gone.

trading, minting, and redeeming of GLP tokens have been disabled on both Arbitrum and Avalanche [AVAX] while the team conducts a metaphysical investigation into where it all went wrong (spoiler: probably somewhere in the code).

The affliction, they assure us, infests only GMX V1, while V2 and its token, like Alyosha among the Karamazovs, remain untarnished apostles. One might note that the smart contracts had, until now, passed their audits—those paper shields!—but the hackers, artful as Raskolnikov with a crowbar, discovered the one wormhole left for them to wriggle through.

In a demonstration of newfound self-control, all trading functions everywhere have been frozen. GMX’s core contributors and hired detectives are piecing together the crime, questioning the very soul of their blockchain.

Rest assured, a detailed account—war and peace, in bug reports—will arrive when this existential whodunit comes to a close. Until then, the prudent should cling to official GMX channels for morsels of truth, and perhaps, hope. 🥲

2025: The Year of the Crypto Guillotine

In the dark ledger of 2025, the GMX breach is but another short footnote in a text filled with weeping ledgers.

Crypto hacks? $2.5 billion vaporized in just six months, with Bybit losing a modest $1.4 billion in February. The numbers, like Dostoevsky’s tortured monologues, spiral toward the absurd.

June’s drama: Nobitex, an Iranian exchange, finds itself dancing with disaster, courtesy of the infamous Gonjeshke Darande hacker collective. $81 million vanishes, services halt, and—presumably—someone’s existential dread reaches new heights.

No pattern to the madness: Some crooks exploit smart contracts, others deploy phishing, and a lucky few even get a job inside! If nothing else, these hackers have read too much classic Russian literature—always probing for the weak spot in the soul, or the code.

The Phantom Menace: State-Sponsored Mischief

Meanwhile, the U.S. Treasury pulls yet another villain from its rogues’ gallery: Song Kum Hyok, part of a North Korean clique famous for more than just karaoke.

This troupe stands accused of hacking their way into both crypto exchanges and defense contractors, their tools a collection of fake IDs and phishing schemes straight out of “Crime and Punishment”—if Raskolnikov were a sysadmin.

Beyond raw code, these actors wield the fine arts of psychological manipulation, coaxing secrets from staff who—like Old Father Zosima—are too trusting for their own good. The result: compromised systems, missing assets, and a headache reminiscent of Petersburg at midnight.

These attacks, a cocktail of politics and greed, demonstrate that the great game is now played on digital battlefields, with the usual cast of scoundrels, ideologues, and sleep-deprived IT managers.

Afterlife of a Hack: The Industry Responds (Sort of)

Fresh wounds breed newfound caution. DeFi platforms, struck by hard lessons, scramble to tidy up their affairs—not unlike Svidrigailov tidying up after a particularly messy decision.

GMX’s agile disabling of trading is paradigmatic: fear breeds action, action breeds anxiety, anxiety breeds…more audits! The industry now busies itself with audits and watchful monitoring, hoping to catch the next Raskolnikov before he makes off with the loot.

Users, meanwhile, are reminded (between existential crises) not to click anything unofficial. Phishing, that eternal seductress, preys most during these times of chaos.

The eternal debate churns: regulation versus robust code. Some long for the cold embrace of bureaucracy, others place faith in code worship and peer review. No doubt, the GMX drama of 2025 will be cited at parties as the year’s best argument for both.

One thing is clear: Crypto’s 2025 has all the makings of a Dostoevskian tragedy—heroes, villains, hard questions, and just enough irony to fill an empty wallet.

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2025-07-10 13:00