Lazarus Group has kickstarted their attempts to launder the funds stolen from Bybit, moving 5,000 ETH from the stolen $1.5 billion hack.
The move was first confirmed by blockchain sleuth ZachXBT on Telegram but was confirmed later by Bybit CEO Ben Zhou in a post on X. The stolen funds were moved to a fresh Ethereum address, before being moved through a mixer and being bridged to Bitcoin via coinflip.
Bybit records massive inflows amid funds movement
Bybit has been recording massive inflows since the hack. According to data from SoSoValue, over the last 12 hours, the firm has received about $4 billion in deposits, with 63,168.08 ETH, $3.15 billion in USDT, $173 million in USDC, and $525 million in CUSD.
Most of the funds were sent from the exchange’s cold wallets to IRS hot wallets, fuelling withdrawals, and bridge loans from external liquidity providers. After deleting the Telegram post he made earlier, ZachXBT connected this hack to the Phemex hack, noting an overlap in stolen funds. “Lazarus Group just connected the Bybit hack to the Phemex hack directly on-chain, commingling funds from the initial theft address for both incidents,” Zach said.
Meanwhile, Zhou mentioned that withdrawals were progressing considerably. “12 hours from the worst hack in history. ALL withdrawals have been processed. Our withdrawal system is fully back to normal pace. You can withdraw any amount and experience no delays,” he said.
Zhou also promised to release a full incident report, noting that the firm will beef up its security henceforth. “Bybit will come out with a full incident report as well as security measures in the next few days. I will personally keep you all posted,” he said.
Epileptic, Chainalysis, and Arkham tracked the funds to 39 different wallets. Arkham announced a $36k bounty on the identity of the hacker, a prize that ZachXBT won by connecting the hack to the Lazarus Group. Bybit now holds the record of the biggest hack in history, beating out $611 million from Poly Network and $570 stolen from Binance in 2022.