Bybit CEO Ben Zhou has confirmed that $1.07 billion—roughly 77% of the property stolen within the change’s latest $1.4 billion safety breach—can nonetheless be tracked.
In a March 4 replace, Zhou disclosed that hackers efficiently laundered $280 million, round 20% of the 499,000 ETH stolen.
In the meantime, investigators have managed to freeze $42 million, accounting for 3% of the compromised funds.
Zhou acknowledged that 11 unbiased bounty hunters have been rewarded $2.1 million for serving to to freeze stolen property. Among the many prime contributors have been Mantle, Paraswap, and blockchain investigator ZachXBT.
THORChain’s function
Zhou revealed that the attackers transformed a lot of the stolen ETH into Bitcoin (BTC) via THORChain, a decentralized platform designed for cross-chain asset swaps.
He acknowledged that the hackers funneled round 83% of the stolen property—equal to 417,348 ETH price roughly $1 billion—into BTC. They then dispersed these funds throughout 6,954 wallets, with a mean stability of 1.71 BTC per pockets.
This exercise considerably boosted THORChain’s transaction quantity within the final two weeks to greater than $5.8 billion following the Bybit breach. Blockchain analyst EmberCN additionally reported that the platform earned roughly $5.5 million in charges from these transactions.
Blockchain safety researcher Taylor Monahan criticized THORChain, claiming its construction allows prison actions beneath the guise of decentralization. She argued that its system operates in an remoted ecosystem that advantages insiders and facilitates cash laundering.
Monahan stated:
“[THORChain] exists in its personal little bubble that’s principally exhausting criminals and the insiders who’ve found out how you can revenue from stated prison flows immediately or not directly.”
Nevertheless, Zhou acknowledged that the funds moved via the platform can nonetheless be traced. Based on him, it will likely be important to freeze the funds within the coming weeks earlier than hackers try to money out via centralized exchanges, over-the-counter (OTC) desks, and peer-to-peer (P2P) networks.
ExCH and OKX involvement
In the meantime, Zhou additionally reported that the stolen property have been moved via different platforms, together with ExCH and OKX Web3 Proxy.
Zhou disclosed that 40,233 ETH—price roughly $100 million—moved via OKX’s Web3 proxy. Of this quantity, 16,680 ETH stays traceable, whereas 23,553 ETH ($65 million) requires extra data from OKX to trace.
In the meantime, 79,655 ETH—round 16% of the full stolen—was funneled via ExCH, an change that had beforehand denied facilitating illicit transactions for the Bybit hacker.
In a Feb. 23 assertion, ExCH refuted claims that it had laundered funds for North Korea-linked entities however confirmed that:
“[An] insignificant portion of funds from the ByBit hack finally entered our deal with 0xf1da173228fcf015f43f3ea15abbb51f0d8f1123, which was an remoted case and the one half processed by our change, charges from which we will likely be donated for the general public good.”
