Bybit's 500,000 ETH stolen were all washed away and turned into hidden selling pressure? CEO issued an announcement clarifying: 77% of cash flow can be traced
The Bybit exchange recently suffered a hacker attack and nearly 500,000 ETH was stolen. According to the latest monitoring by on-chain analyst Yi Jin, the hackers have cleaned all the stolen ETH. Bybit CEO Ben Zhou updated the tracking progress of the stolen funds today, saying that 77% of them are still traceable, 20% can no longer be traced, and 3% have been frozen.
(Preliminary summary: Bybit CEO personally recounted 72 hours of life and death: The financial chief said tremblingly that he lost 410,000 ETH, and there was an internal P-1 emergency mechanism...)
(Background supplement: Bybit responded to the Safe wallet incident: Confirming that the security is 100% complete and the infrastructure is not affected)
The cryptocurrency exchange Bybit was attacked by hackers on the 21st of last month. The hackers stole approximately US$1.5 billion from the cold wallet. ETH and continue to be laundered. The main method of money laundering is to exchange ETH into BTC through the cross-chain liquidity protocol THORChain.
According to the latest monitoring by on-chain analyst Yi Jin, hackers have laundered all 499,000 ETH stolen from Bybit. The whole process lasted 10 days. During the money laundering process by hackers, the price of ETH fell by 23%, from US$2,780 to US$2,130. THORChain also gained US$5.9 billion in transaction volume and 550 US dollars due to hacker money laundering. Thousands of dollars in fee income.
Hackers have cleaned all 499,000 ETH ($1.39 billion) stolen from Bybit. The entire process lasted 10 days.
ETH price has dropped 23% in the process (from $2,780 to $2,130 now).
THORChain, the main channel used by hackers to launder money, also received $5.9 billion in transaction volume and $5.5 million in fee income due to hacker money laundering.
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— Ember (@EmberCN) March 4, 2025
Slow Mist founder Yu Xian said that nearly 1.5 billion U.S. dollars of ETH assets were stolen from Bybit. Except for part of them that were recovered, others have escaped from Ethereum, and most of them have entered the world of Bitcoin. On Bitcoin, there is a complex coin laundering project, and the node operators of THORChain have made a lot of money.
Cosine also named hackers for laundering money through eXch, a non-KYC cryptocurrency exchange. Although Bybit has contacted eXch to help freeze assets, so far eXch has still gone its own way.
Extended reading:Bybit offers a 10% bounty to recover stolen funds, and coin mixer eXch refuses to intercept stolen assets, causing controversy
Bybit CEO updates the progress of stolen funds
At the same time, Bybit CEO Ben Zhou released the latest summary of hacker fund tracking today, pointing out that the total number of stolen funds is about 500,000 ETH, equivalent to about 1.4 billion US dollars, of which 77% are still traceable, 20% are no longer traceable, and 3% are frozen.
3.4.25 Executive Summary on Hacked Funds:
Total hacked funds of USD 1.4bn around 500k ETH, 77% are still traceable, 20% has gone dark, 3% have been frozen.
Breakdown:
– 83% (417,348 ETH, ~$1B) have been converted into BTC with 6,954 wallets (Average 1.71 btc each) . This and…— Ben Zhou (@benbybit) March 4, 2025
The hacker fund tracking details are as follows:
- 83% (417,348 ETH, about 10 Billions of stolen funds have been converted into Bitcoin, involving 6,954 wallets (an average of 1.71 BTC per wallet), and this week and next will be critical for the funds to be frozen, as funds will begin to be liquidated on exchanges, over-the-counter (OTC) and P2P platforms.
Hackers mainly use THORChain to exchange ETH for Bitcoin:
- The number of ETH exchanged through the THORChain chain is 361,255 pieces, equivalent to 900 million US dollars, accounting for 72%, this part can be tracked
- 79,655 ETH, accounting for about 16% of the funds, through ExCH The pipeline disappeared and is still waiting for update
- 40,233 ETH, equivalent to US$100 million, accounting for 8%, were traded through the OKX Web3 proxy. Among them, 16,680 ETH can still be tracked, while 23,553 ETH, equivalent to US$65 million (approximately 5%), cannot be tracked and require information from OKX Web3.
In terms of bounty updates, there are currently 11 parties helping Bybit freeze funds. The top three most prominent ones are Mantle, Paraswap and ZachXBT. Bybit has paid 2,178,797 USDT to 11 bounty hunters.
