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- Bybit CEO Ben Zhou reports that 88.87% of the $1.4B stolen funds remain identifiable, though hackers are using Bitcoin mixers to obscure transactions.
- Exchanges and blockchain firms like Tether, THORChain, and Binance coordinated their efforts to freeze $42.89M within 24 hours.
- Bybit offers a 5% reward for information leading to the freezing of stolen assets and launched a live tracking website for users to help monitor the situation.
Bybit CEO Ben Zhou said that 88% of the hacked money from the platform can still be traced but that more and more cybercriminals are using Bitcoin mixers to hide their tracks. By March 20, Zhou’s executive summary stated that authorities can still trace 88.87% of the $1.4 billion worth of hacked cryptocurrency. But the crooks have taken great pains to hide the origins of the money.
Hackers converted the majority of the stolen funds, 86.29%, or $1.23 billion, into 12,836 Bitcoins (BTC). They then divided the Bitcoins into 9,117 purses, with 1.41 BTC per purse. According to Zhou, the attackers began utilizing Bitcoin mixers to obscure the transaction record of stolen assets. This made it even more challenging to track the flow of the stolen assets.
Hackers originally received the money in Ethereum (ETH). They then converted it to Bitcoin using the cross-chain liquidity provider THORChain. THORChain has recently come under criticism due to its involvement in enabling the cyberattackers to continue their laundering operations. The lead developer of THORChain resigned in protest against the refusal to cooperate to prevent laundering operations.
Criminals laundered stolen money through mixers and sent it through a series of peer-to-peer (P2P) vendors. The practice will become more prevalent as it is even more challenging to trace the stolen money. Currently, 7.59% of money has gone dark, that is to say it cannot be traced anymore. Authorities have successfully frozen only 3.54% of the stolen money to date.
Crypto Recovery Success with $42.89M Frozen in 24 Hours
The joint action by Tether, THORChain, ChangeNOW, FixedFloat, Avalanche, CoinEX, Bitget, and Circle successfully froze $42.89 million worth of assets. This occurred within 24 hours during the first round of recovery attempts. The Binance and Huobi exchanges also helped by freezing accounts that were traced to have been utilized with the assets that were stolen after being provided with intelligence by blockchain analytics firm Elliptic.
Zhou revealed the report on stolen funds and stated that the team deemed 63 out of 5,012 bounty reports submitted in the past month as valid and actionable. He also reiterated that combating the use of mixers remains the top priority for Bybit, as these tools continue to complicate recovery efforts.
Bybit introduced a live tracking website to crowdsource the recovery of lost funds. Users can track the addresses of the wallets involved in the stolen assets through the website. Bybit is providing a reward of 5% of frozen assets to anyone who provides information that results in a freeze of the lost assets.
The situation continues to evolve, with Bybit urging the crypto community to remain vigilant and assist in the fight against the rising use of mixers to launder stolen funds.
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