Hacked cryptocurrency exchange Bybit has revealed that around 20% of the funds stolen from it have now “gone dark,” as the hackers behind the $ 1.4 billion hack managed to launder them through decentralized trading platforms.
In a newly published update, Bybit CEO Ben Zhou revealed that 77% of the 500,000 hacked ETH are currently still traceable, but noted that the firm has lost the trail of around 20% of the funds that the hackers already managed to launder.
Per Zhou, the funds were primarily laundered through the ExCH exchange, with 16% going dark through the platform. Around 79,655 ETH were laundered through it, and it failed to respond to Bybit’s requests for cooperation on the issue.
The hackers also moved around $900 million through the decentralized exchange THORChain to move some of the funds onto the Bitcoin blockchain. Yet through it, Bybit can keep on tracing the funds.
3.4.25 Executive Summary on Hacked Funds:
Total hacked funds of USD 1.4bn around 500k ETH, 77% are still traceable, 20% has gone dark, 3% have been frozen.
Breakdown:
– 83% (417,348 ETH, ~$1B) have been converted into BTC with 6,954 wallets (Average 1.71 btc each) . This and…— Ben Zhou (@benbybit) March 4, 2025
Zhou further detailed that around $100 million went through an OKX web3 proxy, and around $65 million of those funds became untraceable as they “require info from OKX web3 wallet.”
The firm, it’s worth noting, was hacked through modified code in Safe wallet, which it was using to help manage its multi-signature wallet infrastructure.
Bybit’s War on Lazarus Advances
Zhou also added updates on the cryptocurrency trading platform’s on the North Korean hacking group Lazarus, pointing out that 11 parties have helped it freeze funds, with a total of 3% of the hacked funds having been frozen.
The largest contributors to the war on Lazarus were Mantle, Paraswap, and popular on-chain sleuth ZachXBRT, and in total, these entities received more than $2 million in USDT in rewards for their support in freezing the funds.
