The FTX attacker turned to ChipMixer to launder funds and already washed round 360 Bitcoin (BTC), based on on-chain sleuth ZachXBT.
Replace: FTX attacker has began utilizing ChipMixer to launder the funds (to date ~360 BTC) https://t.co/xuiCaajnh8 https://t.co/qsSJs8d8OV
— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) November 25, 2022
Earlier assaults
The FTX drainer has been energetic since Nov. 12. Along with vital hits that caught the neighborhood’s consideration, the attacker has continually been shifting tokens between 8:00 and 10:00 UTC.
The assault was first observed when FTX and FTX U.S. began experiencing $450 million price of withdrawals. The stolen funds had been first offered for tokens, together with Ethereum (ETH) and Binance USD (BNB), earlier than getting consolidated in a single predominant pockets.
On Nov. 17, it was observed that the attacker drained one other 30,000 BNB tokens, which was price round $7.95 million on the time. One other large hit got here on Nov. 21, when the attacker moved 180,000 ETH in 12 separate transactions.
ChipMixer
In line with knowledge from Aug. 2022, ChipMixer facilitated the laundering of 48.9% of funds on the Bitcoin community, whereas Twister Money helped with 74.6%. Roughly 26,021 Bitcoins had been despatched to ChipMixer, and 14,370 Bitcoins had been withdrawn from the protocol in the course of the first six months of the yr.
In line with crypto influencer FatManTerra, ChipMixer is deployed by the U.S. authorities and is “a United States authorities honeypot.”
🧵 At present, I am sharing my long-standing concept behind a US authorities covert operation designed to partially crack Bitcoin privateness and deanonymize transactions. I imagine that standard Bitcoin mixer ChipMixer is definitely a United States authorities honeypot. Here is why.
— FatMan (@FatManTerra) November 23, 2022
In line with FatManTerra, ChipMixer was launched in 2017 with ample reserves and an uncommon “pay what you need” mannequin and shortly rose to prominence. It spent massive quantities on bounties and advertisements whereas having zero income.
In his 19-Tweets-long thread, FatManTerra defined why he’s “completely positive” that ChipMixer is a honeypot and mentioned he had his eye on different protocols that is also honeypots. He states:
“After ChipMixer’s historical past, it’s clear to me that they’re being bankrolled by an especially rich entity who doesn’t care about profitability and has some huge cash to burn on making the service standard — tens of millions spent, however income coming solely from small donations.”
