Binance Exchange, which is still ranked as the world’s biggest trading platform has come to Curve.Finance’s aid by helping the Decentralized Finance (DeFi) platform to recover some of the stolen funds on its platform by hackers earlier this week.
As shared by the trading platform’s Chief Executive Officer, Changpeng Zhao, the hackers were sending the stolen funds to the exchange in hopes that it will not be discovered that they stole the funds. The iconic crypto figure said the $450,000 recovered comes in as 83% of the total funds that were stolen in the front-end attack which notably came in at $570,000.
Binance froze/recovered $450k of the Curve stolen funds, representing 83%+ of the hack. We are working with LE to return the funds to the users. The hacker kept on sending the funds to Binance in different ways, thinking we can't catch it. 😂#SAFU https://t.co/Ekea9moeAw
— CZ 🔶 Binance (@cz_binance) August 12, 2022
There are a few avenues to launder the proceeds of funds from cybercrime and typically, digital currency trading platforms are often the last resort. However, the growing sanctions on crypto mixers have placed hackers on edge and have made the transfer of funds therein somewhat more difficult.
With the latest placement of Tornado Cash on the US Treasury’s sanctions list, most crypto-linked platforms including Celsius have started blocking addresses that relate or have links to the crypto mixing tool.
This may account for why the Curve Finance loot was routed through Binance, and luckily, the exchange’s monitoring systems were affected to help confiscate the funds. According to Changpeng Zhao, the trading platform is now working with law enforcement agencies to help return the retrieved funds back to Curve Finance’s users.
Binance as a Menace to Hackers
Binance exchange has come under the spotlight in recent times for its role in diverting looted funds from DeFi-based protocols.
Whether it is sheer luck at play, or the odds were just against the cybercriminals, no one can really tell, but Binance was also very instrumental in helping Axie Infinity’s Ronin Bridge to minimize the impact of the hack it recorded earlier this year.
In the same way, Curve Finance’s funds were looted when attempted to be laundered through it, Binance also helped the Ronin protocol to recover $5.8 million of the more than $620 million siphoned through the bridge. While it is yet unclear how much of the funds were truly recovered, Binance came off as the only source that helped recover the funds.
