Bybit swiftly repays 40,000 Ethereum loan as hacker launders $250 million

Bybit has returned the 40,000 Ethereum loan, valued astatine astir $99.98 million, obtained from Bitget pursuing the caller $1.4 cardinal information incident.

Blockchain investigation level Lookonchain reported that the repayment occurred connected Feb. 24, with Bybit transferring the funds from its acold wallet backmost to Bitget.

On Feb. 25, Bitget CEO Gracy Chen confirmed the instrumentality of the funds, emphasizing that they had assurance successful Bybit’s quality to repay. According to her, the indebtedness was extended arsenic a motion of enactment and came with nary involvement oregon collateral requirements.

Chen added:

“No interest, nary collateral—this was simply astir supporting a adjacent successful need. Great to spot Bybit afloat recovered, and we ne'er doubted the instrumentality of the loan.”

Bitget provided the indebtedness connected Feb. 22 aft Bybit experienced the exploit that affected its Ethereum acold wallet. At the time, Bitget said the transferred funds were from its ain reserves, not idiosyncratic deposits.

Meanwhile, further on-chain investigation indicates that Bybit transferred an other 47,800 ETH, worthy astir $118 million, from its acold wallet into Binance. Lookonchain said these funds were utilized to settee loans obtained from different institutions and ample crypto holders.

These repayments came aft Bybit revealed that it had closed its ETH liquidity gap, restoring its lawsuit plus ratio to a 1:1 match.

$250 cardinal laundered

The indebtedness repayment comes arsenic the Bybit attacker steps up its laundering efforts.

According to blockchain analytical level SpotOnChain, the attackers person already laundered astir 100,000 ETH—valued astatine astir $250 million—through analyzable steps. These see breaking the stolen funds into smaller portions and transferring them crossed aggregate addresses.

The hacker past utilized THORChain for cross-chain transactions, converting ETH into different assets similar Bitcoin and DAI.

Blockchain analytical steadfast Arkham Intelligence pointed out that these funds are being moved frequently, with 2 to 3 transactions occurring each minute.

Despite these activities, the hacker inactive controls 399,000 ETH, surpassing holdings attributed to salient figures similar Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin oregon adjacent the Ethereum Foundation.

In effect to these challenges, Bybit CEO Ben Zhou announced that the speech is processing a strategy to forestall hacks and amended industry-wide efforts to retrieve mislaid funds.

The station Bybit swiftly repays 40,000 Ethereum indebtedness arsenic hacker launders $250 million appeared archetypal connected CryptoSlate.