Bitso restricted trading in World Mobile Token after a security incident involving unauthorized WMTx issuance on Ethereum triggered significant price volatility. The exchange has disabled WMTx purchases while continuing to allow sell conversions, limiting exposure to the affected asset without interrupting other tokens or account functions. The restriction remained unresolved as of September 21.
According to Bitso’s official incident report, the exchange identified the issue at 16:34 UTC on September 20 and paused WMTx trading as a precaution. Bitso said customer funds remain secure and that no other assets or account services are affected. The platform has not provided a timetable for restoring purchases, saying its engineering team is monitoring the situation.
Unauthorized WMTx Minting Triggers Exchange Action
The underlying incident extends beyond Bitso. World Mobile said an exploit involving the SingularityNET bridge resulted in WMTx being minted on Ethereum without authorization, prompting the project to contact exchanges, freeze affected deposits and work with security partners to revoke minting authorities. The security boundary therefore involves the Ethereum-side bridge infrastructure rather than a reported compromise of World Mobile Chain itself.
Initial monitoring from PeckShield attributed 53.838 million unauthorized WMTx to the attacker cluster, alongside 260 million AGIX. Separate forensic analysis from Bitquery later identified substantially more WMTx generated through hundreds of converter calls. Those figures should not yet be treated as a single reconciled loss amount, because unauthorized tokens created, tokens sold and realized attacker proceeds are different measures.
Other exchanges also reacted to the incident. Bitvavo suspended WMTx deposits and withdrawals before later halting trading, while stating that customer balances remained unaffected. Multiple venue restrictions indicate that exchanges were attempting to contain exposure to irregularly issued supply rather than responding to an isolated Bitso infrastructure failure. Bitso’s response differs in that sell conversions remain available.
WMTx is used within the World Mobile ecosystem for functions including World Mobile Chain gas, staking and rewards for infrastructure operators. Unauthorized issuance can disrupt the economic assumptions surrounding a token even when the underlying blockchain continues operating, because excess supply can reach trading venues and create severe price dislocations.
Full Scope of Incident Remains Under Review
The event adds to a broader series of crypto security incidents in which the compromised component matters as much as the headline loss. Recent cases have involved smart-contract vulnerabilities and unauthorized issuance, private-key compromises and separate unauthorized mint exploits. Those attack paths carry different security boundaries and should not be treated as interchangeable protocol failures.
The same distinction applies to WMTx. Current evidence points toward compromised bridge authorization and irregular Ethereum-side token creation, while there is no indication in Bitso’s notice that its own wallets or customer accounts were breached. Bitso’s trading restriction is a containment response to an external token-level security event, not evidence of an exchange compromise.
The next milestone will be a reconciled accounting from World Mobile and its partners covering unauthorized WMTx issuance, tokens sold or frozen, remediation of bridge permissions and treatment of affected supply. For Bitso users, the immediate indicator will be restoration of normal WMTx purchases once the exchange determines that the security and supply risks have been contained.