Arkham Intelligence: FTX Hacker Panicked, Still Has $339M in Cryptos, Ether
The wallets connected to the exploiter, as discovered by Arkham, contain $216 million in ETH, $45 million in stablecoin DAI. It also contains $46 million in BNB, native token of the Binance ecosystem; $4 million in USDT; and $3.6 million of MATIC.
PAXG Accounts Banned By U.S Authorities
When Paxos was instructed to ban the accounts by American authorities, about $20 million worth of PAXG, a stablecoin tied to the value of gold, got frozen. In addition, it prevented the holder of the tokens from transferring or selling them tokens in any way.
According to CoinDesk’s reporting, the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX owned by Sam Bankman-Fried, had unusual withdrawals of more than 600 million dollars late on Friday night. One of the entities at the core of the vulnerability stole around $400 million worth of cryptocurrency from the exchange’s wallets.
The assault occurred the same day FTX and another 138 enterprises part of Bankman-crypto Fried’s conglomerate sought protection under the bankruptcy code. According to the report that Arkham compiled. The hacker behaved rashly based on their activity on the blockchain.
First, they battled to dump currencies such as LINK, MATIC, and PAXG split into smaller quantities to avoid losses caused by slippage. Then, they converted tokens using a variety of decentralized exchanges, such as 1inch, UniSwap and CowSwap.
Arkham noticed that the attacker “looked panicked” and “lost a huge amount of token holdings” as they moved their assets across multiple chains. To avoid being caught. It was discovered after tracking the attacker’s blockchain movements.
On the Ethereum blockchain, they also transferred tokens to DAI and ETH, two cryptocurrencies that governing bodies cannot readily sanction. It was most likely an effort on their part to consolidate the holdings they already had.
Miguel Morel: Hacker Not Very Smart
Miguel Morel, the CEO at Arkham Intelligence, stated that it is becoming more evident that the person behind the FTX exploit is not very smart. They seem to have a minimal strategy but have rapidly attempted to accomplish whatever they can do with the finances.
Additionally, the aggressor made at least one rookie mistake. According to Dyma Budorin, the Chief Executive Officer of the blockchain security audit company Hacken. The individual carelessly accessed their approved private account on the cryptocurrency exchange Kraken to transmit sufficient TRX tokens to pay the transaction costs.
The relatively simple operations give the impression that there is a chance to get back the money the hacker stole. But, according to Morel, “I believe it’s just a matter of little time until they’re caught. Because they’ve been using a variety of off-ramps, at which point, it will simply be a question of retrieving the monies.”
