A large, suspicious transaction of 4,064 Bitcoin, roughly equivalent to $238 million, has been detected on the blockchain, raising alarms among crypto users. Blockchain tracking service Whale Alert identified the transfer, which was then scrutinized by widely circulated on-chain sleuth ZachXBT.
ZachXBT stated that the stolen Bitcoin was immediately offloaded to multiple platforms such as ThorChain, KuCoin, ChangeNow, eXch, Avalanche Bridge, and the Railgun. They are following a very tricky strategy of disbursing the funds, making it difficult to trace the stolen wealth.
The investigation determined that the embezzled funds were potentially linked to Genesis Global Trading, a major player in the crypto lending market. Specifically, the theft occurred from two addresses that were traced to Genesis Trading, with one address containing 642; one wallet containing 376 BTC and the other 2,173 BTC.
Regarding the matter, on-chain researcher ZachXBT, who reported the recorded $238 million BTC transfer, pointed out that the Lazarus Group may not be involved. ZachXBT, who previously attributed the theft to the North Korean Lazarus hacking group due to the scale and nature of the operation, later said that the behavior of the stolen funds was not consistent with Lazarus’ typical modus operandi.
However, the investigation has linked the stolen funds to Genesis Global Trading and therefore another perpetrator is involved in this theft. Lazarus has done many crypto hacks before, but this one does not seem to be visibly from them.
SlowMist, an upstream blockchain security firm, also commented on the event and suspected the association between the embezzled Bitcoin and Genesis Global Trading. The firm explained that money laundering was not a simple process, but rather a process that involved multiple transactions.
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