Binance Recovers $5.8 Million From Axie Infinity’s Stolen Funds

Leading cryptocurrency exchange Binance said it has recovered $5.8 million linked to the recent hack of popular blockchain gaming project Axie Infinity.

Binance Recovery of Nearly $6 Million

Changpeng Zhao (CZ), CEO of Binance, said in a tweet on Friday that the group behind the hack started moving the stolen funds today and they deposited about $5.8 million to Binance, perhaps in an effort to launder it. 

CZ noted that the hackers craftely distributed the funds across 86 different accounts.

Ronin Network Exploit Almost a Month Old

Recall that last month, Coinfomania reported that the Ronin network, an Ethereum sidechain developed by Axie Infinity, was exploited, leading to the theft of an estimated $625 million worth of crypto assets. 

Surprisingly, the Ronin team only discovered the hack six days after the network was compromised. The team was alerted when a user reported an inability to withdraw 5,000 ETH from the network.

Following the hack, the United States Treasury Department said in a report that it was able to link the Axie Infinity hack to Lazarus, a notorious North Korean hacking group that has allegedly stolen about $2 billion worth of assets from crypto exchanges.

The department said it identified the same Ethereum address belonging to the group as the one behind the Ronin hack.

AXS Price Down 34% Since Ronin Hack

Since the discovery of the Ronin hack, AXS, the native cryptocurrency of Axie Infinity, has lost more than 30% of its value. Before the incident, AXS was trading around the $70 mark, but at the time of writing, the token was exchanging hands at $46, representing a 34% decline since the hack.

Similarly, the price of Ronin’s native cryptocurrency – RON – was affected by the hack. The coin is currently trading around $1.35, representing a 41% decline since the exploit. 

Meanwhile, Solana-based Wormhole recently lost over $300 million in an exploit similar to that of Ronin.