The Chief Executive Officer of Bybit, Ben Zhou said 77% of the funds the exchange recently lost to hackers are still traceable. Zhou offered this glimpse of hope through a post on his X page on Tuesday.
According to the CEO, efforts are underway to ensure the recovery of the stolen funds. More so, Zhou said investigators are confident that they may recover a significant portion of the assets as about 500k ETH worth $1.07 billion are traceable.
It is worth mentioning that the revelation of Zhou surfaced shortly after the Lazarus group moved another 62,200 ETH on Sunday. As revealed, the hackers have moved around 343,000 ETH from the stolen assets leaving just 156,500 left.
So far, the bad actors have transferred more than 65% of the assets and there are growing indications that the hackers might resume action soon. Despite the active efforts of the syndicate to move the funds, Zhou is insisting that a huge part of the assets are traceable.
Key updates into the hack by Bybit CEO
In his disclosure, the CEO of Bybit narrated how 20% of the fund is beyond reach. Zhou stated that efforts from the team and other investigators managed to intercept $42 million which is about 3% of the loot.
The CEO said the exchange has paid out around $1.1 million to white hat hackers for recovering a part of the stolen funds. He explained how Bybit can recover $65 million worth of ETH but emphasized that such a move is only realistic if the OKX Wallet team can support it.
Zhou went on to vow that the exchange is exploring every alternative to ensure that the hackers are unable to move the remaining funds. However, the attackers have converted the remaining $1 billion to Bitcoin, sending 1.71 BTC each to 6,954 wallets.
By that, the hackers intend to make efforts to track the assets becoming almost impossible. Zhou discussed how the coming weeks will be crucial in curtailing the attempts of the hackers to move the funds.
The Bybit CEO pointed out how the group will attempt to sell the stolen cryptocurrencies using exchanges, over-the-counter outlets, and peer-to-peer trade. He discussed how the attackers often employ THORChain, a decentralized exchange to cash out the loot in BTC and ETH.
Zhou revealed that the North Korea-backed syndicate used other outlets like ExCH and OKX Web3 Proxy to launder the assets.