The CEO of Bybit, Ben Zhou, confirmed that $ 1.07 billion, or 77% of the assets stolen during the recent security violation of $ 1.4 billion in the Stock Exchange – can still be followed.
In an update of March 4, Zhou revealed that the pirates managed to whiten $ 280 million, or about 20% of the 499,000 stolen ethics.
Meanwhile, investigators managed to freeze $ 42 million, representing 3% of compromise funds.
Zhou said that 11 independent premium hunters had been rewarded for $ 2.1 million for helping to freeze stolen assets. Among the main contributors were the mantle, the paraswap and the zachxbt blockchain investigator.
The role of Thorchain
Zhou revealed that the attackers had converted a large part of the stolen ETH into Bitcoin (BTC) via Thorchain, a decentralized platform designed for the exchanges of transversal assets.
He said the hackers sent around 83% of stolen assets – equivalent to 417,348 ETH worth around 1 billion dollars – in BTC. They then dispersed these funds on 6,954 wallets, with an average balance of 1.71 BTC per portfolio.
This activity has considerably increased the volume of Thorchain transactions in the past two weeks to more than $ 5.8 billion after the Bybit violation. The Embercn blockchain analyst also said that the platform had gained around $ 5.5 million in the costs of these transactions.
The blockchain security researcher Taylor Monahan criticized Thorchain, saying that his structure allows criminal activities under the cover of decentralization. It argued that its system operates in an isolated ecosystem that benefits initiates and facilitates money laundering.
Monahan said:
“(Thorchain) exists in his own little bubble which is mainly hard criminals and initiates who understood how to take advantage of these criminal flows directly or indirectly.”
However, Zhou said the funds have moved to the platform can still be traced. According to him, it will be essential to freeze the funds in the coming weeks before the pirates try to withdraw centralized exchanges, over -the -counter offices (OTC) and networks between peers (P2P).
OKX exchange and involvement
Meanwhile, Zhou also pointed out that stolen assets had been moved by other platforms, including the Exch and OKX web3 proxy.
Zhou revealed that 40,233 ETH – Worth about $ 100 million – emitted an OKX web3 proxy. From this amount, 16,680 ETH remains traceable, while 23,553 ETH ($ 65 million) requires additional OKX information to follow.
Meanwhile, 79,655 ETH – 16% of the total stolen – were channeled through ECH, an exchange which had previously denied facilitate illegal transactions for the bybit pirate.
In a declaration of February 23, Exch refuted the allegations according to which he had whitened funds for entities linked to North Korea, but confirmed that:
“(An) insignificant part of the bybit hacking funds finally entered our address 0xf1da173228fcf015f43f3ea15abbb51f0d8f1123, which was an isolated case and the only part dealt with by our exchange, costs from which we will be given for the public.”
