The post Bybit Funds on the Move, Could be Headed for Bitcoin Mixers ‘Next’: Elliptic appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.

North Korean hackers have started laundering stolen Bybit funds, with blockchain intelligence firm Elliptic tracking over $140 million in initial transactions designed to obscure the money trail. The stolen funds are being systematically moved through anonymous exchanges before being converted to Bitcoin, a process that makes it harder to trace and recover the assets, the firm wrote in a blog post on Saturday. “The second step of the laundering process is to ‘layer’ the stolen funds in order to attempt to conceal the transaction trail,” Elliptic wrote. “This transaction trail can be followed, but these layering tactics can complicate the tracing process, buying the launderers valuable time to cash out the assets.” The $1.46 billion social engineering attack, which took place on Friday and consisted mostly of Ethereum, is the most significant theft in crypto history, surpassing the $611 million stolen from Poly Network in 2021.  Elliptic and Arkham Intelligence have linked the attack to North Korea’s Lazarus Group, citing the use of decentralized exchanges and other services, including cross-chain bridges and coin swap services in a bid to throw off the scent. “If previous laundering patterns are followed, we might expect to see the use of mixers next to further obfuscate the transaction trail,” it said. However, that may prove challenging due to the “sheer volume of stolen assets.” Within hours of the theft, attackers distributed the stolen assets across 50 different wallets, each holding approximately 10,000 ETH. The funds are now being systematically emptied and converted to Bitcoin, according to Elliptic. The attackers first converted stolen tokens like stETH and cmETH to Ethereum using decentralized exchanges, likely to avoid potential asset freezes.  This matches Lazarus Group’s typical laundering playbook of converting stolen tokens to “native” blockchain assets before further obfuscation, Elliptic wrote. To date, the group has stolen…

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Filed under: News - @ February 24, 2025 10:25 pm