Oh, it’s just another day in the crypto world, and guess what? An elderly US individual is the latest victim of a $330 million Bitcoin theft. Yep, that’s right. It’s now the fifth-largest crypto heist ever. Big whoop.
The attacker didn’t just grab the Bitcoin by accident, no, no. This wasn’t a “oops I tripped and hit send” situation. This was an advanced social engineering attack—aka, the hacker was smooth. They used some fancy tricks to waltz right into the victim’s wallet. If you want to feel even worse about the whole thing, onchain investigator ZachXBT posted about it on X (formerly Twitter), because that’s what the cool kids call it now. This all went down on April 28, 2025. Gotta love that fresh, new tech buzz, right?
The Bitcoin was moved fast—3,520 BTC, valued at around $330.7 million, if you can even imagine that. The transfer got flagged immediately by ZachXBT. Not sure how he sleeps at night, but apparently, he’s always on it.
And then, boom. The stolen Bitcoin gets funneled through not one, not two, but SIX exchanges. What a party. The hacker was clearly a pro, swapping it all into Monero (XMR), a privacy-focused cryptocurrency, which, let’s be honest, is like saying “I want to disappear into thin air.” Well played.
And get this—once the Bitcoin was taken, the attacker wasn’t like “Okay, let’s just keep this under the mattress.” No, they used a “peel chain” technique, which sounds like a fancy term for “let’s break this down and hide it so well that even Sherlock Holmes couldn’t find it.” They sliced the funds into smaller, harder-to-track chunks. Nice work.
“$330M in BTC was received in two transactions, then immediately distributed via peel chains,” Yehor Rudytsia, the guy doing the legwork, told CryptoMoon. And just when you thought it couldn’t get more complicated, he continued: “Funds started flowing through multiple exchanges and mixers. It’s now up to 40+ wallets. I can’t even keep up.”
Over 300 wallets and 20 exchanges. Yep, that’s how they roll.
Hacken, the company that’s tracking this mess, says $284 million got funneled through these chains. After a few more rounds of “peeling” and redistributing across sketchy exchanges, we’re left with about $60 million. What happened to the other $224 million? Who knows? It’s the crypto world, people!
Rudytsia explained that over 300 hacker wallets and 20+ exchanges were involved. And yes, even Binance made the list. Everyone’s favorite exchange. How fun.
CryptoMoon reached out to Binance for a comment, but I bet they’re too busy doing… Binance things.
Now, here’s the kicker. The legal system, right? Apparently, freezing centralized exchange accounts is like trying to stop a tidal wave with a paper towel. So yeah, it’s slow. Real slow. Meanwhile, the attacker is probably sipping a drink somewhere, smiling at their cleverness.
But wait, there’s more! Once the Bitcoin was swapped into Monero, that’s when things got even worse. Monero’s like the Houdini of cryptocurrencies. It’s got this privacy-preserving magic, making it impossible to track. So, goodbye to any hope of recovery. Poof, just like that.
To add salt to the wound, the hacker had likely pre-set accounts across multiple exchanges, meaning this wasn’t just a random lucky break. Nope, this was carefully planned.
Some of the stolen BTC was even bridged to Ethereum. Because why not throw a little more complexity into the mix, right?
Not Your Average Laundering Operation
ZachXBT has some thoughts, and he’s not buying into the theory that North Korea’s Lazarus Group is behind this. Nope, he’s leaning towards independent hackers who actually know what they’re doing. These guys didn’t just stumble into $330 million like it was a lost wallet on the sidewalk.
But despite all the back-and-forth, there’s a twist. Experts can’t pin this one on any known hacker group. The laundering tactics used here are so sophisticated that they can’t even say “Oh, that looks like Lazarus Group.” Nope, this is some new level of crypto crime.
If you’re thinking of keeping your crypto safe, you might want to listen to the experts: multisignature wallets, cold storage, and rotating those private keys like your life depends on it. Because, spoiler alert, it does.
In case you were wondering, hackers stole over $1.6 billion worth of crypto in just Q1 of 2025. That’s more than your average heist. And 90% of those losses came from the $1.5 billion attack on Bybit. Guess who? Yep, North Korea’s Lazarus Group. So you know, just another Tuesday.
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2025-04-30 16:36