The hackers who stole more than $450 million from FTX and FTX USA moments after the cryptocurrency exchange filed for bankruptcy on November 11 continue to move the assets in an attempt to launder them.
A crypto analyst going by the name ZachXBT on Twitter alleged that FTX hackers have transferred a portion of the stolen funds to OKX, after using the Bitcoin mixer; ChipMixer. The analyst reported that at least 225 BTC – with a market value of USD 4.1 million – have been sent to OKX so far.
1/ Myself and @bax1337 spent this past weekend looking into the FTX attacker’s deposits to ChipMixer.
It appears they’ve likely been transferring a portion of the stolen FTX funds to OKX after withdrawing from CM
So far we’ve accounted for at least $4.1m (255 BTC) sent to OKX pic.twitter.com/C46JZWtktn
— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) November 29, 2022
According to ZachXBT, FTX hackers began depositing BTC to ChipMixer on Nov. 20, after using the Ren Bridge, a protocol that acts as an inter-network connection for various cryptocurrencies. In his analysis, ZachXBT shared that he had observed a pattern with addresses receiving funds from ChipMixer. According to him, each of the directions follows a similar pattern; “withdrawal from ChipMixer”, “50% is withdrawn” and then “50% is deposited to OKX”.
Following the discovery of the deposits made on OKX, the president of the exchange shared on Twitter that; “OKX is aware of the situation, and the team is investigating the deposits to their wallets.”
#OKX is aware of the situation, and the team is investigating the wallet flow.
—lennixlai.eth (OKX) (@LennixOKX) November 29, 2022
On November 12, Cointelegraph reported that the hack occurred just after FTX announced its bankruptcy. At the time, of the $663 million, some $477 million was suspected to have been stolen, while the rest is believed to have been moved to secure storage by FTX.
On November 20, the hackers began transferring their Ether (ETH) holdings to a new wallet address. The FTX wallet thief was the 27th largest ETH holder after the hack, but dropped 10 positions after selling 50,000 ETH.
The fact that hackers managed to drain the assets of FTX Global and FTX.US at the same time, despite the fact that these two entities are completely independent, has become a highly contentious topic of debate within the crypto community, and sparked speculation that it was an inside job.
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