Since late February, Elliptic reported that the Lazarus Group began laundering funds stolen from the Bybit hack using Bitcoin mixers.
Start of Funds Laundering
Lazarus Group started using Bitcoin mixers Cryptomixer and Wasabi Wallet to launder the stolen funds, which were previously converted into Bitcoin through the eXch exchange.
Methods of Laundering
Elliptic explains that the stolen $1.4 billion have been passed through mixers to obscure transaction trails. Cryptomixer is a centralized mixer that allows users to deposit assets into a common pool from which they withdraw their funds after fees. Wasabi Wallet uses Coinjoin transactions to hide transaction trails and is not a traditional mixer.
Collaborative Recovery Efforts
So far, $43,000 connected to the hack have been frozen on OKX. Collaborative efforts by the crypto community have led to freezing over 3% of the stolen assets, though around 20% remain untraceable.
Despite the scale of the theft, the crypto community continues efforts to trace and recover the stolen funds.
