Bybit CEO: 20% of $1.4B stolen funds ‘gone dark’

Bybit CEO Ben Zhou confirmed that $280 cardinal of the $1.4 cardinal stolen from the speech has been laundered and is nary longer traceable. Still, astir $1.07 cardinal remains trackable, allowing investigators to proceed their efforts to retrieve the funds.

On March 4, Zhou provided an update connected the question of 500,000 Ether (ETH) stolen successful the February hack and the ongoing efforts to halt the atrocious actors from running distant with the loot.

“Total hacked funds of USD 1.4bn astir 500k ETH, 77% are inactive traceable, 20% has gone dark, 3% person been frozen,” Zhou said.

By saying “gone dark,” Zhou indicated that 20% of the stolen funds had been successfully mixed, laundered oregon sent to platforms that obscure transactions by the North Korean hackers.

Recovering stolen assets successful parts

Investigators person truthful acold helped frost $42 million, equivalent to 3% of the stolen funds.

Source: Ben Zhou

The hackers converted astir $1 cardinal of the stolen funds — 417,348 ETH — to Bitcoin (BTC) and dispersed it crossed 6,954 cryptocurrency wallets with an mean holding of 1.71 BTC per wallet. This fragmentation makes further tracking and betterment much difficult.

Related: Bybit hackers resume laundering activities, moving different 62,200 ETH

According to Zhou, the adjacent 1 to 2 weeks volition beryllium captious for freezing further funds earlier the attackers effort to currency retired done crypto exchanges, over-the-counter (OTC) platforms and peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions.

Bybit hackers mean to support the stolen funds

According to Zhou, the Bybit hackers chiefly utilized the decentralized speech THORChain to currency retired ETH and BTC. Other platforms similar ExCH and OKX Web3 Proxy were besides utilized to determination immoderate of the funds.

He besides said that $65 cardinal worthy of ETH tin beryllium recovered but volition request enactment from the OKX Wallet team. Additionally, 11 bounty hunters person been rewarded a full of $2.1 cardinal for their efforts successful freezing stolen funds.

On Feb. 25, blockchain analytics steadfast Elliptic identified more than 11,000 wallets linked to the Bybit hackers.

Source: Ben Zhou

Additionally, Bybit engaged Web3 information steadfast ZeroShadow for blockchain forensics connected Feb. 25. The information steadfast is tasked with tracing and freezing the stolen Bybit funds and maximizing the recovery.

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