$70M Ripped from UPCX: Another Audited Crypto Project Falls Flat

Another day, another so-called "secure" blockchain project gets gutted. This time, it’s UPCX a self-proclaimed financial service platform running on its own blockchain. In a breach that went largely unnoticed until it was over, attackers made off with roughly $70 million worth of UPCX tokens.

The hack wasn’t some advanced zero-day exploit. It was more of the usual: smart contract vulnerabilities or misconfigured tokenomics that allowed the attacker to either mint or drain the supply at will. These are the types of failures that keep happening, even in projects that boast about being "fully audited."

UPCX isn’t some big-name chain. It's one of those under-the-radar micro projects, which makes this even more revealing. Criminals aren’t just hunting whales anymore they’re hitting minnows with weak defenses and inflated promises. The attack was efficient and quiet. Once the funds were in hand, they were pushed through laundering channels likely mixers or obfuscation protocols, although specifics haven’t been disclosed publicly.

The company froze operations, tapped external security firms, and contacted centralized exchanges to blacklist the stolen tokens. That’s standard PR cleanup. The real issue here is upstream: these projects are deploying smart contracts without hardened code, or worse, relying on rubber-stamped audits from third-tier firms.

The takeaway? "Audited" doesn’t mean "secure." In the current landscape, it often means nothing.

UPCX is just the latest. If a $70 million breach can happen to a project this small, the implications for the wider DeFi ecosystem especially newer or low-liquidity chains should be obvious.