- Over 84% of stolen assets were swapped from ETH to BTC using THORChain.
- Hackers laundered funds through Wasabi, Tornado Cash, and other privacy tools.
- Bybit has recovered market share and continues to trace 68.5% of the funds.
In one of the most significant crypto heists to date, hackers stole $1.4 billion from Bybit in February. Of this, 84.4% of the funds—roughly $1.2 billion—had already been swapped from Ethereum to Bitcoin.
To combat the sophisticated laundering operation, Bybit launched a $140 million bounty program to incentivize white-hat hackers and cybersecurity experts.
Crypto Trail of Lazarus: Bybit’s $1.4B Heist and the Hunt for Missing Funds
Following the attack attributed to the North Korea-linked Lazarus Group, the stolen crypto was quickly shuffled through a complex web of mixers and cross-chain platforms. The initial laundering route saw 944 BTC—worth about $90 million—processed through the Wasabi mixer on the Tor network. It was then moved through multiple additional privacy services and bridges.
Once laundered, the assets traveled through cross-chain platforms like eXch, Lombard, Stargate, LI.FI, and SunSwap. They eventually reached peer-to-peer and over-the-counter platforms. These steps significantly complicated the tracing of the funds. As a result, 27.6% of the assets are now considered untraceable.
Despite the scale of the breach, Bybit’s swift response and bounty initiative have kept the majority of the stolen funds under watch. Zhou emphasized the need for more bounty hunters skilled in decoding mixers. This would aid in tracing the crypto that has been anonymized through multiple decentralized services.
On the business front, Bybit has rebounded impressively. The exchange’s daily trading volume sits at $1.9 billion. This ranks it second only to Binance. With 3.5 million weekly site visits and new partnerships to strengthen cybersecurity, Bybit is working to rebuild trust in its platform.
Bybit’s determined recovery efforts and transparent communication highlight both the growing sophistication of crypto-related crime and the resilience of exchanges under threat.
“We welcome more reports, we need more bounty hunters that can decode mixers as we need a lot of help there down the road.” – Ben Zhou, CEO of Bybit
