This weekly roundup of news from Mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong attempts to curate the industry’s most important news, including influential projects, changes in the regulatory landscape, and enterprise blockchain integrations.  

Limping out of 2021

Last week we thought we had hit rock bottom for Chinese exchanges, as Bitmart was on the unfortunate end of a $150m hack. This week, it was more of the same, as AscendEX lost $80m to a similar style of theft affecting its Ethereum, BSC and Polygon hot wallet. On December 16, AscendEX released a security post-mortem detailing the attack:

An in-depth security audit identified the breach as the result of an exploit of hardware-level vulnerability from third-party infrastructure utilized by AscendEX. The infiltration was carried out by highly sophisticated perpetrators. We have been working closely with law enforcement as well as blockchain forensic firms to gain further knowledge on the incident.

Like Bitmart, AscendEX responded quickly, reassuring the community that their funds would be safe and accounted for, limiting the damage to its reputation. AscendEX, which was formerly known as BitMax, had done a relatively impressive job of attracting users around the globe and had just closed a $50 million Series B in November of 2021. That round included big names like Polychain Capital, Alameda Research, and Jump Capital, giving the exchange momentum to embrace a truly global growth strategy in the wake of suffocating Chinese regulations. 

Hard times at Huobi?

On December 15, one of the longest-running exchanges restricted…