Technology entrepreneur Austin Allred was among the victims. His wallet, linked to a project called KellyCloud AI Assistant, was drained of Ethereum — though the hacker left his memcoin holdings untouched. Allred said there was no sign that anyone else had logged into his Bankr account, suggesting the attacker accessed the private keys through other means.
How to detect the attack
banking It is a cryptocurrency trading tool that allows users to send plain language instructions — such as “swap this token” or “transfer funds” — to an artificial intelligence that executes the trades.
The platform also automatically creates a crypto wallet for every X account that interacts with its bot.
The feature actually attracted attention earlier this year, when someone reportedly tricked Grok into asking Bankr to launch a token, then withdrawing funds from it to a wallet he controlled.
Tuesday incident It seems to follow a similar pattern. Yu Xian, founder of blockchain security firm SlowMist, said the hack was likely a social engineering scheme targeting an AI agent.
According to Sheyan, the attacker exploited the trust connection between Grok and Bankrbot to push through unauthorized transaction approvals.
He identified three wallet addresses associated with the attacker that together contained $440,000 in cryptocurrency.
Shean also pointed to instantaneous injection as part of this method, a technique through which malicious instructions are fed to an AI to manipulate its behavior.
Update: We have identified that an attacker was able to access 14 bank wallets.
We’ve shut things down temporarily while we work out the details. We will compensate any and all lost funds.
We will provide more updates as we have them. https://t.co/gVMLexiglT
— Banker (@bankrbot) May 19, 2026
Bankr undertakes full payment
Bankr confirmed the hack in a post on X, saying it had identified the attacker who accessed 14 wallets. The exchange said it has closed all transaction activities – swaps, transfers and token deployment – instead investigation It continues. It also pledged to cover all losses.
Users have been warned not to sign any transactions at this time. For those whose wallets have already been hit, Bankr is telling them to stop using affected accounts completely, set up a new wallet with a new seed phrase on a clean device, and transfer any remaining tokens or NFTs immediately.
If assets cannot be transferred, it is recommended to cancel existing approvals. Banker also noted the possibility of malware, urging users to scan their computers and phones for suspicious software or browser extensions.
What users have lost
Some users reported losing up to $150,000 from a single wallet. The exact total of all 14 hacked wallets has not been confirmed.
The attack adds to a difficult stretch for the cryptocurrency space. Bad actors stole more than $168 million in the first quarter of the year.
April saw two of the biggest hits to date – the $280 million Drift Protocol exploit and the $292 million Kelp hack.
Just a day before the Bankr incident, the Verus protocol’s Ethereum bridge was also reportedly hit.
Featured image from Unsplash, chart from TradingView
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