Bitcoin steady near $81,500 on Friday; Initia's token rises after network halt over exploit

Bitcoin was trading at about $81,470 as of 6:10pm GMT on Friday 23 October, up about 0.5% over 24 hours, according to CoinGecko data. It had fallen below $82,000 on Thursday as technology shares dropped.

Ether was at about $2,403, up about 1.1% over 24 hours, as of the same time. BNB rose about 2.2% to near $743, solana was near $104.24, up about 0.8%, and XRP was near $1.31, CoinGecko data showed.

Initia, a blockchain network built to link multiple chains, halted its main chain and rollups on Friday after a security incident, The Block reported. Co-founder Ezaan Mangalji said preliminary findings pointed to a previously unknown bug in the network’s MoveVM implementation that allowed unauthorised token minting, but that it “does not apply to native INIT tokens”.

“The attacker was able to mint and bridge out ~$2.7m worth of AUSD, ETH, and USDC before the chain was paused,” he said. Initia said it was investigating with security teams, validators and exchanges, according to The Block.

The INIT token fell 14% after the exploit was reported before reversing the loss, The Block said. It was up about 15.6% over 24 hours at about $0.149 as of 6:10pm GMT, CoinGecko data showed.

For Thursday’s prices, see our earlier report.