Hackers who breached Bybit stole $1.4 billion, but CEO Ben Zhou confirmed that $1.07 billion of the stolen funds remains traceable.
While $280 million has been laundered, investigators successfully froze $42 million. To assist in asset recovery, bounty hunters, including Mantle, Paraswap, and ZachXBT, were rewarded $2.1 million.
A large portion of the stolen Ethereum was converted into Bitcoin using THORChain, a decentralized platform. Roughly $1 billion worth of ETH was swapped for BTC and dispersed across thousands of wallets, driving THORChain’s transaction volume to $5.8 billion.
The platform also earned $5.5 million in fees from these transactions. Security researcher Taylor Monahan accused THORChain of enabling money laundering under the pretense of decentralization, claiming its ecosystem benefits insiders.
Beyond THORChain, stolen assets were funneled through other platforms, including ExCH and OKX Web3 Proxy. OKX processed $100 million in ETH, with $65 million still requiring further tracking.
Meanwhile, ExCH, which initially denied involvement, later admitted a portion of the stolen funds had moved through its system and pledged to donate any related fees.
CoinMarketCap, one of the most widely used crypto data tracking platforms, is reportedly facing a front-end security breach, with multiple users encountering a suspicious prompt to verify their wallets.
Russia’s attempt to formalize its crypto mining sector is falling short, with most miners opting to remain off the books despite new regulations.
A well-known investor at crypto VC firm Hypersphere has fallen victim to an elaborate phishing attack that wiped out a substantial portion of his personal savings.
Iranian authorities have imposed new restrictions on domestic cryptocurrency exchanges following a large-scale cyberattack on Nobitex, the country’s leading trading platform.