Bybit CEO Updates on Hacked Fund Movement: 77% Remains Traceable, 20% Untraceable, 3% Frozen

Bybit CEO Updates on Hacked Fund Movement: 77% Remains Traceable, 20% Untraceable, 3% Frozen

Bybit CEO Updates on Hacked Fund Movement: 77% Remains Traceable, 20% Untraceable, 3% Frozen

On Tuesday, Bybit CEO Ben Zhou updated the status of the stolen funds on social media platform X. He stated that a total of nearly 500,000 Ethereum (valued at approximately $1.4 billion) was stolen by hackers, with 77% currently traceable, 20% having “disappeared,” and 3% frozen.

The hacking incident that occurred last month at Bybit represents the largest amount of stolen funds in the history of cryptocurrency hacking. Analysis from various sectors has confirmed that the attack was carried out by the North Korean hacker group Lazarus Group. Subsequent investigations revealed that the actual target was a machine belonging to a Safe wallet developer, rather than a Bybit employee.

Ben Zhou pointed out that 83% of the stolen funds (417,348 ETH, valued at around $1 billion) have been converted to Bitcoin (BTC) and are distributed across 6,954 wallets (with an average of 1.71 BTC per wallet). Zhou indicated that this week and the following week are crucial for freezing the funds, as the hackers will begin laundering the money through exchanges, over-the-counter (OTC) transactions, and peer-to-peer (P2P) trading.

According to Ben Zhou, the hackers primarily utilized the privacy-oriented blockchain THORChain for laundering the funds, with the detailed flow of funds as follows:

– The amount of ETH exchanged through THORChain is 361,255 (valued at approximately $900 million), accounting for 72%, which is traceable.
– 79,655 ETH (approximately 16% of the stolen funds) remains untraceable due to laundering through the exchange eXch, and a response from eXch is still awaited.
– 40,233 ETH (approximately $100 million, accounting for 8%) was laundered through the OKX Web3 proxy, of which 16,680 ETH is traceable, while the remaining 23,553 ETH (approximately $65 million, around 5%) is untraceable, pending information from the OKX Web3 wallet department.

On-chain data analyst Yu Jin noted that the hackers’ laundering process lasted ten days, during which THORChain processed approximately $5.9 billion in transactions, generating $5.5 million in fee revenue.