Shortly after the FTX Derivatives Exchange implosion, the exchange was also attacked by a hacker who made away with about $600 million worth of cryptocurrencies.
Since then, he has been seeking means to redirect the assets without raising suspicions, but the traceability of blockchain transactions has not permitted him. He has now dumped up to 50,000 Ethereum (ETH) in exchange for Bitcoin (BTC).
Before now, the wallet identified as “FTX Accounts Drainer ” was the 27th largest ETH holder with 250,735 Ether after the successful attack as most of the stolen digital currencies were in ETH. It has currently dropped by 10 positions after the cryptocurrency dump which happened over the weekend. This leaves the wallet with about 200,000 ETH.
The ETH was siphoned from the FTX Global and FTX U.S exchange wallets just after the exchange’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing. The 50,000 ETH were transferred to a wallet address known as 0x866E. It was in this wallet address that the coins were swapped to renBTC (ERC-20 version of BTC). Also, it serves as a bridge to two wallets on the BTC blockchain.
Presently, around 30,000 ETH has been exchanged into renBTC, and one of the wallets bc1qvd…gpedg held 1,070 renBTC while another wallet bc1qa…n0702 held 2,444 renBTC. There are still speculations as to who the hacker is. Some believe that it may be an FTX executive, some others think it may be a whitehat hacker and another group says it is a malicious entity.
FTX Hacker Utilized Peel Chain Technique
So far, crypto analytic group CertiK has been able to ascertain that the hacker made use of a peel chain technique to launder the renBTC. Notably, a peel chain technique is a money laundering strategy used to launder large sums of digital assets. It makes use of lengthy chain series which are broken down into simple transactions.
According to Cointelegraph, “a small portion is “peeled” from the subject’s address in a low-value transfer. These incremental laundered funds are often transferred to exchanges where they can be converted to fiat currency or other crypto assets.”
While there are also suspicions that the Bahamas government may have played a pivotal role in this hack, the Royal Bahamas Police Force together with the Securities Commission of the Bahamas (SCB) has launched a probe into the misconduct of FTX.
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