
Nearly half of stolen $1.4b from Bybit now untraceable
Crypto Heist Leaves Millions Untraceable as Bybit Theft Laundered Through Mixing Services
Three months after one of the largest crypto thefts on record, blockchain data reveals that nearly half of the $1.4 billion stolen from Bybit has vanished from public tracking. The stolen funds were systematically laundered through various mixing services, making it increasingly difficult to trace the illicit transactions.
According to the data, $644 million (46%) of the stolen funds has been processed through mixing services, effectively obscuring their origin and destination. Meanwhile, exchanges and authorities have managed to freeze $63 million (4.5%), leaving $693 million (49.5%) still traceable.
The largest portion of the laundered funds, $247.5 million (around 966 BTC), was processed through Wasabi Wallet. Another $94.1 million was laundered via eXch, a mixing service that publicly claimed to shut down in April but remains operational. Smaller amounts were also moved through Tornado Cash ($2.5 million in ETH) and Railgun ($1.7 million in ETH).
The continued activity of eXch is particularly concerning, as analysts at TRM Labs have confirmed that the service still functions through back-end APIs. The mixer's pooled transactions create near-total opacity, making it extremely difficult to trace the funds and determine the number of individuals involved.
In a related development, a March article revealed that the North Korean hacking group TraderTraitor compromised a Safe{Wallet} developer's laptop and used stolen AWS session tokens to bypass multi-factor authentication, gaining access to Bybit's funds. The breach occurred in early February when a Docker project, posing as a "stock investment simulator," was downloaded onto the developer's Mac, leading to the installation of malware.
As the investigation into the Bybit theft continues, the use of sophisticated money laundering techniques highlights the ongoing challenges in tracking and recovering stolen cryptocurrency funds.