Bybit’s CEO, Ben Zhou, explained how the pirates turn to Bitcoin mixers to whiten $ 1.5 billion from Ethereum stolen from the exchange last month.
In a shared update on X on March 20, Zhou revealed that 193 BTC, around 16 million dollars, from stolen funds, were channeled via Wasabi Wallet before being distributed on various P2P suppliers.
In addition to wasabi, Zhou revealed that the hackers used other mixers, such as cryptomixer, Railgun and Tornado Cash.
He added:
“We believe that this trend will develop as more funds go through mixers. The transactions of decoding mixers are the challenge n ° 1 that we are confronted now. If you can help, please contact. “
Cryptographic mixers allow users to mix their cryptographic transactions with others, which makes the tracing funds difficult on public blockchains. While users concerned with confidentiality often use these services, cybercriminals have also exploited them to hide illegal activity.
Consequently, regulators have sanctioned platforms like Tornado Cash for their role in laundering stolen assets.
The stolen funds are still partially traceable
Despite the attempted money laundering in progress, Most stolen assets remain Traceable.
Zhou has confirmed that 88.87% of the 500,000 stolen eThs – nearly $ 1.5 billion – can still be followed, 7.59% have been made impossible and 3.54% were frozen.
He also detailed that 440,091 ETH, valued at around $ 1.23 billion, were converted to 12,836 BTC and distributed on 9,117 wallets.
Bybit actively investigated the violation, receiving 5,012 bonus reports in the last month. However, only 63 provided usable information. Zhou has urged more premium hunters to help follow the whitewashed assets by cryptographic mixers.
While Parbit remained operational after the attack, the consequences of the incident continues to weigh on the exchange.
Chain data show that Bybit’s market share increased from almost 20% on February 21 to around 5% on March 2. However, the exchange has since rebounded, climbing at 10% on March 19, according to Kaiko Data.
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