20% of $1.4B stolen funds ‘gone dark’

Bybit CEO Ben Zhou confirmed that $280 million of the $1.4 billion stolen from the exchange has been laundered and is no longer traceable. Still, about $1.07 billion remains trackable, allowing investigators to continue their efforts to recover the funds.

On March 4, Zhou provided an update on the movement of 500,000 Ether (ETH) stolen in the February hack and the ongoing efforts to stop the bad actors from running away with the loot.

“Total hacked funds of USD 1.4bn around 500k ETH, 77% are still traceable, 20% has gone dark, 3% have been frozen,” Zhou said.

By saying “gone dark,” Zhou indicated that 20% of the stolen funds had been successfully mixed, laundered or sent to platforms that obscure transactions by the North Korean hackers.

Recovering stolen assets in parts

Investigators have so far helped freeze $42 million, equivalent to 3% of the stolen funds.

The hackers converted about $1 billion of the stolen funds — 417,348 ETH — to Bitcoin (BTC) and spread it across 6,954 cryptocurrency wallets with an average holding of 1.71 BTC per wallet. This fragmentation makes further tracking and recovery more difficult.

According to Zhou, the next one to two weeks will be critical for freezing additional funds before the attackers attempt to cash out through crypto exchanges, over-the-counter (OTC) platforms and peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions.

Bybit hackers intend to keep the stolen funds

According to Zhou, the Bybit hackers primarily used the decentralized exchange THORChain to cash out ETH and BTC. Other platforms like ExCH and OKX Web3 Proxy were also used to move some of the funds.

He also said that $65 million worth of ETH can be recovered but will need support from the OKX Wallet team. Additionally, 11 bounty hunters have been rewarded a total of $2.1 million for their efforts in freezing stolen funds.

On Feb. 25, blockchain analytics firm Elliptic identified more than 11,000 wallets linked to the Bybit hackers.

Additionally, Bybit engaged Web3 security firm ZeroShadow for blockchain forensics on Feb. 25. The security firm is tasked with tracing and freezing the stolen Bybit funds and maximizing the recovery.

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