A European financial institution may have lost more than $133 million in crypto over the weekend, according to blockchain investigator ZachXBT, who has a long record of tracing stolen funds. He says the money was withdrawn from several exchange accounts on November 1, then quickly swapped and moved through services that make it hard to follow. He also believes the loss is being kept quiet. The institution has not been named and his attribution is unconfirmed.
Ledger Insights traced the stablecoin withdrawals behind the addresses he published. Most of the money left through Kraken. Of $108 million in USDC that moved on November 1 and 2, $102 million came out of Kraken accounts, with the remainder from Crypto.com ($5.4m) and OKX ($660k). In a statement Kraken says the incident did not originate on its platform, that it is investigating reports the assets were subsequently moved through accounts there, that it has restricted those accounts and is working with law enforcement, and that no customer accounts were taken over. In other words, Kraken is saying this was not a theft from a Kraken account but that the exchange may have been used to launder the proceeds.
ZachXBT believes the victim is a large financial institution in Western Europe and that the incident is being kept quiet. The institution has not been identified and the attribution is his. What the public blockchain does confirm is that one operator was behind all of it. Money from every account ended up in the same handful of wallets within hours, and it was then swapped into ether or privacy coins and moved through instant exchanges.
What the blockchain apparently shows is the exit. Thirteen Kraken withdrawal addresses were used in sequence over six hours on November 1, several of them receiving a $1,000 test payment followed a minute later by the full balance, typically around $5 million to $10 million. Two more followed the next day, after ZachXBT’s first alert. How the money was taken from the institution in the first place is not visible on chain, and nobody has said.
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