Bybit has recovered from a $150 million hack and secured a $600 million Ethereum (ETH) investment from Mirana Ventures.
The incident, dubbed the largest cryptocurrency theft in history, involved unauthorized access to Bybit's ETH cold wallet. However, the exchange's swift response and key partnerships have helped restore confidence in its security.
Bybit Recovers from Ethereum Hack
According to blockchain analytics firm Arkham, Mirana Ventures has deposited the equivalent of $600 million in ETH into Bybit over the past 3 days, making it the largest ETH depositor since the hack. This is the largest ETH deposit since the hack.
"Mirana Ventures appears to have acquired this ETH by selling $500 million worth of BTC and $100 million worth of USDT through FalconX, Galaxy Digital, and Wintermute OTC." – Arkham post
Mirana Ventures is an early-stage global investment fund that strategically invests in cryptocurrency companies related to Bybit and its affiliate BitDAO. Notably, Bybit's co-founders are among Mirana Ventures' capital providers.
Meanwhile, Bybit has demonstrated impressive financial resilience since the hack. Within 48 hours of the incident, the exchange had recovered 254,830 ETH.
According to the latest blog post, this was made possible through strategic partnerships with major cryptocurrency players like Galaxy Digital, FalconX, and Wintermute. Support also came from Bitget, MEXC, and DWF Labs.
In fact, last week, Bybit CEO Ben Zhou publicly confirmed the successful restoration of its Ethereum holdings. The exchange has also fulfilled its financial commitments. According to on-chain data, Bybit has sent 40,000 ETH back to the platform to repay a loan from Bitget.
Bybit Hackers Move Stolen ETH
While Bybit recovers the stolen funds, the hackers behind the attack have been actively moving the stolen Ethereum. According to Arkham, the hackers have already used THORChain to bridge at least $6.2 million worth of the stolen ETH into Bitcoin (BTC) and exchanged ETH for DAI on OKX's Web3 Swap.
On-chain analysts have also revealed that the hackers have laundered around $113 million worth of 45,900 ETH in the past 24 hours. This brings the total amount laundered so far to 135,000 ETH, or around $335 million, which is nearly a third of the total stolen.
A significant portion of the stolen funds, 363,900 ETH worth around $900 million, remains in the hackers' wallets. At the current pace, analysts suggest it may take the hackers 8-10 more days to clear the remaining funds.
Bybit is not sitting idle. In response, the exchange has introduced a new API system that can track blacklisted wallets in real-time. The CEO has also introduced a bounty website dedicated to tracking the money laundering activities of the North Korean hacker group Lazarus.
"We have dedicated a team to maintain and update this website. We will not stop until Lazarus or any other malicious actors in the industry are eliminated. In the future, we will open this up to other victims of Lazarus as well." – post
This new platform will promote greater transparency within the cryptocurrency industry by allowing bounty hunters to track down stolen funds and receive rewards for successful freezing efforts.
To further protect user assets, Bybit has frozen $42.89 million of the stolen assets. This was a collaborative effort with major cryptocurrency firms like Tether, CoinEX, and OKX.
Tether has frozen 181,000 USDT, CoinEX has secured 847,000 USDT, and OKX has frozen 2,783 ETH. Other partners, including FixedFloat, ChangeNow, and Avalanche (AVAX), have also frozen additional assets.
