David Edwards
According to Bybit CEO Ben Zhou, of the $1.4 billion that was taken in the February breach, $280 million has been laundered, making it nearly hard to track down. However, investigators have a chance to collect the funds because almost $1.07 billion is still within reach.
Investigating the Stolen 500,000 Ethereum
Zhou described in a March 4 update the movement of 500,000 Ether (ETH) that was taken during the February hack and the continuous measures taken to stop the hackers from cashing out.
“Total hacked funds of USD 1.4bn around 500k ETH, 77% are still traceable, 20% has gone dark, and 3% have been frozen,” Zhou stated.
The 20% “gone dark” refers to money that has been effectively transferred to obfuscation platforms, mingled, or laundered—likely by North Korean hackers. Because of this, they are nearly impossible to recover from.
As part of their recovery operations, cryptocurrency investigators have successfully frozen $42 million, or 3% of the stolen cash.
Zhou claims that hackers exchanged $1 billion (417,348 ETH) for Bitcoin (BTC) and dispersed the funds among 6,954 wallets, with an average of 1.71 BTC in each wallet. Tracking and asset recovery are made more difficult by this fragmentation strategy.
The Need to End the Laundering Process Immediately
As authorities try to freeze more money before the hackers can sell it through cryptocurrency exchanges, over-the-counter (OTC) desks, and peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions, the next week or two is critical.
THORChain and other decentralized exchanges (DEXs) are being used to launder the stolen money. Furthermore, funds that have been stolen have been transferred via platforms like OKX Web3 Proxy and ExCH.
As long as the OKX Wallet team cooperates with investigators, Zhou affirmed that $65 million worth of Ethereum could still be retrieved.
Forensics on Blockchain and Bounty Hunters Take Part in the Effort
11 bounty hunters have received a total of $2.1 million from Bybit for helping to freeze stolen assets, which will aid in the fund recovery process.
Furthermore, more than 11,000 wallets connected to the Bybit hackers have been found by blockchain analytics company Elliptic, which has provided vital information for tracing the illegal payments.
ZeroShadow, a Web3 security company, has also been hired by Bybit with the responsibility of tracking down and freezing stolen assets while optimizing recovery efforts.
The crypto industry is keenly monitoring the response of security teams and authorities to one of the largest exchange hacks in recent history as the investigation progresses.
