WazirX hackers, purported to be part of the North Korean Lazarus Group, have converted the altcoins from their loot into ETH. Wallet activity shows $90.2 million worth of SHIB, $10.2 million of MATIC, and about $7.5 million of PEPE exchanged for ETH.
As the hack concluded, the bad actors held $52 million in ETH. Now, that amount has risen to $201 million after the conversions. Spot On Chain, an on-chain insights firm, posted on X, “The total $ETH holding of #WazirX exploiter has risen to 59,097 $ETH($201M)!” It added, “The exploiter has not made the next moves with these $ETH and only has around ~$12M in altcoins such as $CHR, $CELR, $OOKI, and $FRONT.”
The reason behind the conversions to ETH stems from many altcoins coming with the feature of being blacklisted when stolen, making it easier to track funds originating from criminal activity. For instance, USDT comes with this feature, which Tether uses to comply with authorities. Several other centralized altcoins do as well.
However, ETH does not. So, converting stolen funds into ETH makes the most sense to make an easy getaway. Moreover, ETH’s massive liquidity and relatively high stability ensure hackers can move between positions and not worry about volatility reducing the value of their loot.
Converting stolen assets often implies that hackers will cover their tracks using mixer services like Tornado Cash or by selling them for fiat on centralized exchanges (CEXs) without adequate anti-money laundering (AML) checks. Nevertheless, the hacker still holds about $12 million in altcoins, including CHR, CELR, OOKI, and FRONT.
WazirX assured its user base that it is “leaving no stone unturned to locate and recover the funds.” It continued, “We are in touch with the best resources to help us in this endeavor. While these are our findings from our preliminary investigation, we will keep you posted with further updates.”
