We’ve got a wild story brewing in the crypto world, as it seems that an anonymous hacker—or perhaps a group of them—has pulled off a heist, making off with $20 million in various cryptocurrencies from U.S. government wallets.
And guess what? They’re already trying to launder the money.
The American Job
This whole mess started when hackers took advantage of funds that were originally seized by law enforcement from Bitfinex hackers, totaling around $3.6 billion.
Arkham Intelligence shared that the theft was first spotted when they noticed some unexpected movements in the government’s crypto stash.
“US government-linked address appears to have been compromised for $20 million. We believe the attacker has already begun laundering the proceeds through suspicious addresses linked to a money laundering service.”
Cash is king
Crypto investigator ZachXBT, who recently solved another money laundering case, backed up Arkham’s findings, and he pointed out that the stolen funds quickly moved to several instant exchanges, likely so the hacker could cash out fast.
TLDR it’s a likely theft as funds tied to the USG started going to instant exchanges like N exchnage, Switchain, and Binance nested service.
0x3486ee700ccaf3e2f9c5ec9730a2e916a4740a9f
0xbf6f7c503e858aded4e18ce2bcf93846fd726c15
0x15d0a31ed5050ed8decd3c101aaee0b2ad2e6441 pic.twitter.com/WEdIVKI40u— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) October 24, 2024
The stolen assets include USDC, USDT, aUSDC, and ETH, basically a buffet of popular cryptocurrencies.
Let’s not forget that the U.S. government is one of the biggest holders of Bitcoin and other crypto assets thanks to years of seizing criminal assets.
In the past, even whispers about a potential sell-off have sent shockwaves through the market. Here we go.
If these hackers can breach government security and successfully launder their loot, it raises some pretty serious red flags.
Fallout
Arkham also noted that these stolen assets came from the $3.6 billion seized in connection with Bitfinex, which adds another layer of complexity to the situation.
Just this month, the U.S. government has been working on a plan to help victims recover their assets from that 2016 hack.
They’ve set up a process for defrauded users and are pushing the hackers to give up any claims to those funds.
As it stands, we still don’t know who these attackers are or how they managed to exploit this wallet vulnerability.
Plus, there hasn’t been any official confirmation from the U.S. government about this incident yet. So there will be more in this story, that’s sure.
Have you read it yet? South Korea wants to monitor cross-border crypto activity
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