Suspected Theft Linked to Genesis Global Trading

A large, suspicious transaction of 4,064 Bitcoin, approximately equal to $238 million, has been detected on the blockchain, raising alarm among crypto users. Whale Alert, the blockchain tracking service, identified the transfer, which was then studied by the widespread on-chain sleuth ZachXBT.

ZachXBT stated that the stolen Bitcoin was offloaded instantly to multiple platforms such as ThorChain, KuCoin, ChangeNow, eXch, Avalanche Bridge, and the Railgun. They follow a very snag strategy of disbursement of the funds hence making it hard to trace the stolen wealth.

The probe established that the embezzled money might be linked to Genesis Global Trading, a large crypto-lending market player. In particular, the theft touched two addresses traceable to Genesis Trading, with one address containing 642. ; one wallet contained 376 BTC, and the other had 2173 BTC. 

Regarding this case, on-chain investigator ZachXBT, who reported the recorded $238 million BTC transfer, pointed out that the Lazarus Group might not be involved. ZachXBT, who earlier titled the theft to North Korea’s Lazarus hacking group due to the size and nature of the operation, said later that the behaviour of the stolen funds was not consistent with Lazarus’s typical modus operandi.

However, the investigation has associated the stolen money with Genesis Global Trading and therefore there is another perpetrator involved in this theft. Lazarus has previously perpetrated many crypto hacks, however this one does not seem visibly to be from them.

SlowMist, an upstream blockchain security firm, also responded to the event and suspected the association between the embezzled Bitcoin and Genesis Global Trading. The firm explained that money laundering was not a simple process but rather a process that transacted several operations.