Poloniex Hacker Moves $32M in Bitcoin

PeckShieldAlert, a well-regarded blockchain monitoring entity, announced on April 30, that a wallet associated with the notorious Poloniex hack had transferred around $32 million in funds to three wallets. This seems as if an act of hiding the source of the illegal money.

Hacker Tries to Conceal Poloniex Funds Repeatedly

The biggest transaction of the Poloniex hacker, as per PeckShieldAlert, transferred 486.62 BTC, which amounts to about $30.8 million, to an address. Not only that, 10 BTC and 5 BTC, smaller amounts, were sent to different addresses, worth $623,000 and $316,000, respectively.

The occurrence emanated from a breach of the hot wallet system of Poloniex on November 10 causing a loss of over $33 million. PeckShieldAlert was the one who first noticed and reported the matter to the exchange. Analysis by a number of on-chain experts, especially Tom Wan, revealed that the hacker managed to steal a range of cryptocurrencies with the most significant being the ETH and LINK that were worth $10m and $2.4m, respectively.

Subsequent to this, analysts from Lookonchain disclosed that the individual who was responsible for the Poloniex theft tried to launder the stolen funds by converting them into ETH and TRX. On November 18, 2023, PeckShieldAlert said that Poloniex had tracked down the hacker and was cooperating with the authorities in China, Russia, and the USA. There was also a reward of $10 million suggested to the perpetrator to get the hijacked property back, serving as a white hat inducement.

Poloniex’s attempts to recover the stolen assets have been in vain. The BTC movement of the hacker is the latest cause for concern as it indicates attempts to cover their transaction trail.

$336.3 million was taken via cryptocurrency scams and hacks in Q1 of 2024

A study that was conducted by a blockchain security firm Immunefi shows that the crypto sector lost over $200 million because of a total of 32 hacking and rug pull incidents, which occurred in January – February 2024. This represents an upsurge of 15.4% from 2023, when thefts amounted to $173 million.

However, there has been a 23% decline in losses associated with hacking and scams in the first quarter (Q1) of 2024 compared to 2023. In Q1 2024, the total amount lost to hacking and fraud incidents was approximately $336.3 million, down from $437.5 million in the same quarter of 2023. The report identified 46 hacking incidents and 15 cases of fraudulent activities. Two major projects, Orbit Bridge and Munchables, suffered the largest losses, totaling $144,480,000 – 43% of Q1 losses alone.