SNEAK PEEK
- Hackers took around $650 million worth of altcoins from FTX’s hot wallets a day after the business filed for bankruptcy.
- Over $367 million worth of assets are currently held by the attacker across numerous significant blockchains.
- Cross-chain bridges are allegedly commonly used by hackers to reroute stolen money, according to Elliptic.
A day after FTX declared bankruptcy, hackers stole approximately $650 million worth of altcoins from the company’s hot wallets. The attacker now holds holdings of more than $367 million across several important blockchains as a result of numerous bridgings and on-chain deception.
According to blockchain intelligence company Arkham Intelligence, the attacker used cross-chain bridges and decentralized exchanges (DEX) to launder money.
A total of almost $20 million in PAXG was frozen across the attacker's 4 addresses that hold PAXG.
— Arkham | Crypto Intelligence (@ArkhamIntel) November 14, 2022
The attacker also attempted to obfuscate fund transfers on BSC by 'swapping' tokens with the recipient address set to a separate address, 0x2cb. pic.twitter.com/dLxYyWPuNf
Elliptic claims that cross-chain bridges are frequently used by hackers to reroute stolen money. The transfer of stolen money between several blockchains, known as “chain hopping,” enables hackers to elude law enforcement’s detection.
On November 12, 2022, about $650 million in illicit cash was transferred from FTX’s hot wallet to two Ethereum and Solana wallet addresses.
According to information from the relevant block explorers, the hacker’s wallet address has since connected the funds to other blockchain networks, including Binance Smart Chain, Polygon, and Avalanche.
Binance announced the acquisition of FTX on November 9th, with the possibility of later pulling out. Since then, the value of FTT has decreased by about $308 million, losing nearly 80% of its value over the preceding week.
Following this, FTX tweeted on November 11 that it was concerned about a bankruptcy filing.
However, authorities were able to seize approximately $20 million in Paxos Gold (PAXG) tokens connected to the November 14 hack.
Data from the debank shows that the hacker’s wallet address contains 8,184.9 Paxos Gold (PAXG) tokens on Ethereum and almost 228.5 million Ethereum (ETH).
The wallet has 1.685 million DAI stablecoin and roughly 108.454 million BNB on Binance Smart Chain. In the hacker’s wallet address, Avalanche has about 3.970 million USDT, the stablecoin of Tether.
The hacker’s Solana wallet address has around 144,999 SOL and 27.549 million USDT, according to Solscan data. According to data from Etherscan, the hacker is the 35th-largest Ethereum holder with a total holding value of close to $338 million in altcoins
