Bybit CEO Zhou Ben confirmed that of the $1.4 billion stolen from the exchange, $280 million has been laundered and is untraceable. Nevertheless, approximately $1.07 billion remains traceable, and investigators will continue to work to recover these funds.
On March 4, Zhou updated the flow of funds from the 500,000 Ethereum (ETH) stolen in the February hack and discussed ongoing efforts to prevent criminals from fleeing with the money.
Zhou stated, "The total amount of funds hacked is $1.4 billion, approximately 500,000 ETH, of which 77% is still traceable, 20% has turned dark, and 3% has been frozen."
What Mr. Zhou refers to as "turned dark" means that 20% of the stolen funds have been made untraceable by North Korean hackers through coin mixing, money laundering, or transferring to hidden trading platforms.
Investigators have so far assisted in freezing $42 million, equivalent to 3% of the stolen funds.
Source: Zhou Ben
The hackers exchanged approximately $1 billion of the stolen funds (417,348 ETH) for Bitcoin (BTC) and dispersed it across 6,954 cryptocurrency wallets, with an average of 1.71 BTC held in each wallet. This dispersion makes further tracking and recovery more difficult.
Related: Bybit hackers restart money laundering, 62,200 Ethereum transferred
Zhou stated that the next one to two weeks will be a critical period, and more funds must be frozen as soon as possible to prevent the attackers from cashing out through cryptocurrency exchanges, over-the-counter (OTC) platforms, and peer-to-peer (P2P) trading.
According to Mr. Zhou, the Bybit hackers primarily cashed out ETH and BTC through the decentralized exchange THORChain. Other platforms such as ExCH and OKX Web3 Proxy were also used to transfer some of the funds.
He also mentioned that $65 million worth of ETH could be recovered, but assistance from the OKX wallet team is needed. Additionally, 11 bounty hunters received a reward of $2.1 million for helping to freeze the stolen funds.
On February 25, blockchain analysis firm Elliptic discovered over 11,000 wallets associated with the Bybit hack.
Source: Zhou Ben
Furthermore, Bybit hired Web3 security company ZeroShadow for blockchain forensics on February 25. This security company is responsible for tracking and freezing the stolen Bybit funds in an effort to recover as much as possible.
Related: Uncovering the masterminds behind the largest theft in crypto history: North Korean hacker group Lazarus
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