Crypto analyst Forrest tweeted, “The FTX hacker can't withdraw $270M in ETH without being tracked so what does he do? Dumps it on an illiquid day (Sunday) into a pool with low liquidity (renBTC) while max shorting ETH with private accounts.”
The perpetrator behind the recent FTX hack swapped 30,990 Ethereum tokens (worth $36M) for Bitcoin via RenBridge.
Soon after FTX filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the exchange suffered from a hack that resulted in assets worth $600M being siphoned from its wallets. The hacker behind this attack became one of the largest holders of Ethereum. The stolen assets are estimated to lie between $350M to $400M.
Now, the hacker has started dumping their stolen Ethereum. According to data analysis firm Lookonchain, the perpetrator has transferred 50K Ethereum tokens to another address - 0x866e. They have also converted 30.9K Ethereum into wrapped Bitcoin (wBTC) via 1inch exchange. The hacker then swapped the laundered wBTC tokens for Ren Bitcoin (renBTC), a coin linked to Alameda Research.
Transactional records on EthereumScan reveal the hacker has received over 2.4K Bitcoin in their wallet.
As a result of this incident, Ethereum prices fell below the $1,200 support. Ethereum is currently valued at $1,173, down by 2.94% in the last 24 hours.
Earlier, Bahamas regulators claimed that they had ordered Sam Bankman-Fried to transfer FTX’s assets to government-owned wallets. This led the community to speculate that the siphoned funds may be in the custody of authorities.
However, PeckShield debunked these rumors, noting,
“Some funds were stolen, and other funds were sent to the regulators.”