In brief – An unnamed EU entity is suspected of losing more than $106 million from multiple centralized exchange accounts on Nov. 1, ZachXBT said, with the funds withdrawn as USDC and USDT. – The thief has since swapped stablecoins for ETH, used instant exchanges, converted…
nds to Monero and bridged assets across chains. – ZachXBT said with “a high degree of confidence” that the attacker isn’t North Korea’s Lazarus Group, setting the theft apart from the $6.4 billion Binance hack. Another nine-figure theft has hit crypto, just days after the biggest heist in the industry’s history
An unnamed entity in the European Union is suspected of losing more than $106 million from several of its accounts on centralized exchanges on Sunday, pseudonymous onchain investigator ZachXBT said Monday in a post to his Telegram channel. The funds were withdrawn as USDC and USDT stablecoins by what he called an “illicit actor.” In the 24 hours that followed, the actor moved aggressively to cover their tracks, ZachXBT said. The attacker swapped USDC for ETH, sent funds through instant exchange services such as WellWallet and Kyrrex, converted some to the privacy coin Monero via Wagyu and bridged assets across multiple blockchains.
ZachXBT published 11 Ethereum addresses tied to the theft. Instant exchanges let users quickly swap one cryptocurrency for another, often with little identity verification, while Monero hides senders, receivers and amounts, making it a popular tool for obscuring stolen funds. Swapping out of USDC and USDT also matters because the companies behind those stablecoins can freeze them.