Source: Cointelegraph Original: "{title}"
The co-founder and CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Bybit, Ben Zhou, stated that more than two-thirds of the digital assets stolen by North Korea's Lazarus group in February are still traceable.
In an executive summary of the stolen funds released on April 21 via the X platform, Ben Zhou indicated that out of the total $1.4 billion stolen, 68.6% is "still traceable," 27.6% is "no longer traceable," and 3.8% has been frozen.
He added that the untraceable funds primarily flowed into mixers and were then transferred to peer-to-peer (P2P) and over-the-counter (OTC) platforms via cross-chain bridges.
In February, hackers associated with the Lazarus group exploited vulnerabilities in Bybit's cold wallet infrastructure to steal $1.4 billion, marking the largest cryptocurrency exchange hack to date.
Zhou stated, "Recently, we observed that the mixer primarily used by North Korea is Wasabi." He then noted that after Bitcoin was laundered through Wasabi, "a small portion of it entered CryptoMixer, Tornado Cash, and Railgun."
Zhou confirmed that 944 Bitcoins, worth approximately $90 million, passed through the Wasabi mixer. He added that before these illicit funds ultimately entered P2P and OTC services, the hackers conducted multiple cross-chain and token swap operations through platforms such as THORChain, eXch, Lombard, LI.FI, Stargate, and SunSwap.
Additionally, about 84% of the total, valued at approximately $1.21 billion, consisting of 432,748 Ethereum (ETH), was transferred from Ethereum to the Bitcoin network via THORChain. Zhou noted that approximately two-thirds of this—worth about $960 million in ETH—has been converted into 10,003 Bitcoins, distributed across 35,772 wallets.
Zhou reported that approximately $17 million worth of ETH remains in 12,490 wallets on the Ethereum blockchain.
Zhou also revealed that out of 5,443 bounty reports received in the past 60 days, only 70 were valid.
In February, Bybit launched the Lazarus bounty program, offering a total reward of $140 million for clues that could help freeze the stolen funds.
To date, the program has paid out $2.3 million to 12 bounty hunters, with most of the rewards going to one organization: the layer-2 network platform Mantle, whose efforts led to the freezing of $42 million in funds.
"We welcome more reports; we need more bounty hunters who can crack mixers, as we will need a lot of help in this area in the future," Zhou said.
On April 17, cryptocurrency exchange eXch announced it would cease operations on May 1, following reports that the company was used to launder Bybit's stolen funds.
Related: After shutting down its NFT trading platform, Bybit has also closed four Web3 services.
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