Representatives of Bybit reported that the hackers responsible for the $1.39 billion exchange hack successfully laundered all 499,000 ETH in just ten days. Despite close monitoring by blockchain analytics firms, law enforcement agencies, and cryptocurrency exchanges, the perpetrators effectively used decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols to fully clean the stolen funds.

Details of the Money Laundering

The analytics platform EmberCN began tracking the funds shortly after the theft. On February 25, the company reported that the hackers had laundered over 89,000 ETH, worth approximately 224million,within60hours.Thenextday,theylaunderedanadditional45,900ETHworth224million,within60hours.Thenextday,theylaunderedanadditional45,900ETHworth113 million, bringing the total laundered amount to 135,000 ETH. On February 27, the hackers exchanged 71,000 ETH, valued at around $170 million.

Within four and a half days of the attack, the hackers had converted 206,000 ETH into other crypto assets, averaging about 45,000 ETH per day. However, they still had 292,000 ETH worth $685 million left, which they continued to launder actively.

By February 28, the hackers had laundered another 59,800 ETH, bringing the total to 266,000 ETH, with 233,000 ETH remaining. Interestingly, on March 1, they took a break, laundering only 14,300 ETH worth $32.2 million. The next day, they resumed their activities, converting 62,200 ETH, and by the morning of March 4, according to EmberCN, all remaining funds had been laundered.

Bybit CEO's Perspective

Bybit CEO Ben Zhou offered a slightly different account of the events. In a social media post, he stated that approximately 83% of the stolen funds (around $1 billion) had been converted into Bitcoin (BTC) and distributed across nearly 7,000 wallets. Of the total amount, 20% could not be traced, and 3% had been frozen. Zhou also noted that the majority of the untraceable funds, about 79,655 ETH, had been laundered through the eXch exchange.

The hackers, linked by the FBI to the North Korean Lazarus Group, also processed 40,233 ETH through the OKX Web3 wallet. However, blockchain detectives were only able to trace about 16,680 ETH, with the rest seemingly disappearing. The primary platform used by the hackers for laundering was THORChain. According to Zhou's estimates, over 361,000 ETH worth more than $900 million had been exchanged through this cross-chain liquidity protocol.

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