Bybit’s
$1.9B
CEO Ben Zhou shared new details in an April 21 post on X about the digital asset theft linked to North Korea’s Lazarus Group that hit the platform in February.
According to Zhou, about 68.6% of those stolen funds are still traceable on the blockchain. Meanwhile, 27.6% of the assets have gone off the radar, and 3.8% have been locked or frozen.
Most of the untraceable funds appear to have passed through crypto mixers. Zhou noted that one commonly used service was Wasabi, a platform that mixes Bitcoin
$87,006.44
to hide its source. After going through Wasabi, some of the funds also ended up in other similar tools, such as CryptoMixer, Tornado Cash
$7.47
, and Railgun
$0.7958
.
Did you know?
Subscribe – We publish new crypto explainer videos every week!
Crypto Mining Explained: How to Earn From Mining Bitcoin? (Animated)
Zhou reported that 944 Bitcoin, worth around $90 million, went through Wasabi. After that, the stolen crypto was transferred through various platforms that allow users to swap and bridge assets between blockchains, including THORChain
$1.24
, eXch, Stargate, Lombard, SunSwap, and LI.FI. From there, the assets were sent to peer-to-peer and over-the-counter services.
The hackers also converted a large amount of Ethereum
$1,636.60
to Bitcoin. Out of the 432,748 ETH stolen—about 84% of the total—roughly $960 million worth was converted into 10,003 Bitcoin. These were spread across 35,772 different wallets. About $17 million in ETH is still held on the Ethereum blockchain in over 12,000 wallets.
Zhou also talked about the bounty program that was launched to help track the funds. In the past two months, Bybit received 5,443 tips from the public, but only 70 were found to be reliable.
Furthermore, Zhou encouraged more researchers to get involved, especially those who understand how these mixing services work.
Recently, a $2.6 million hack attempt on Morpho Labs, a decentralized lending platform, was prevented by white-hat hacker c0ffeebabe.eth. How did the company respond? Read the full story.
