The CEO of Bybit, Ben Zhou, has discussed how hackers are utilizing Bitcoin mixers to launder the $1.5 billion in Ethereum that was stolen from the platform last month.
In a recent update posted on X on March 20, Zhou revealed that 193 BTC, about $16 million involved in the theft, passed through Wasabi Wallet before being spread across various peer-to-peer vendors.
Aside from Wasabi, Zhou noted that the perpetrators are employing a range of other mixers, including CryptoMixer, Railgun, and Tornado Cash.
He mentioned:
“We anticipate that this trend will increase as more funds are funneled through mixers. Understanding mixer transactions is currently our greatest challenge. If you have insights to share, please get in touch.”
Crypto mixers enable users to combine their cryptocurrency transactions with those of others, complicating efforts to trace funds on public blockchains. While these services are often utilized by privacy-focused individuals, they have also been exploited by cybercriminals to obscure illegal activities.
Consequently, regulators have imposed sanctions on platforms like Tornado Cash due to their involvement in laundering stolen assets.
Stolen funds remain partially traceable
Despite ongoing laundering efforts, most of the stolen assets still remain traceable.
Zhou confirmed that 88.87% of the 500,000 ETH—which is nearly $1.5 billion—remains trackable, with 7.59% becoming untraceable and 3.54% being frozen.
He elaborated that 440,091 ETH, valued at around $1.23 billion, has been transformed into 12,836 BTC and allocated across 9,117 wallets.
Bybit has been diligently investigating the breach, having received 5,012 bounty reports in the last month. However, only 63 reports contained actionable leads. Zhou has appealed to additional bounty hunters to assist in tracking the assets being laundered through crypto mixers.
While Bybit continues its operations following the attack, the repercussions of the incident still impact the exchange significantly.
On-chain data indicates that Bybit’s market share fell from nearly 20% on February 21 to about 5% by March 2. However, the exchange has made a comeback, rising to 10% as of March 19, according to Kaiko data.