Just In: US Government Wallets Receive $19.3M Back Following Alleged Hack
A government wallet that was drained of US$20 million on Thursday had most of its funds returned on Friday, amid intrigue about the incident, which was highlighted on Twitter as probably involving one of the biggest thefts of the year.
Suspicious activity was flagged on Thursday by blockchain sleuth ZachXBT, who wrote the wallet was interacting with several DeFi protocols and instant exchanges using what he described as a “nefarious” series of transfers.
US Government Recovers Millions in Stolen Crypto from Hacker
According to blockchain analyst ZachXBT, a hacker believed to have stolen around $20 million in crypto assets from a wallet belonging to the U.S. government, has returned about $19 million. Today’s transaction included the transfer of 2,408 ETH and 13.19 million aUSDC back to the government wallet. However, funds previously transferred to exchanges like Switchain and HitBTC have yet to be returned.
As per the on-chain data from Arkham Intelligence, by early Friday, a total of $19.3 million in Ethereum and USDC had been returned to the wallet. However, ZachXBT told his Telegram community that “the funds to exchanges have not been recovered.”
According to Arkham’s analytics, the government wallet is still about $1.2 million short of the initial $20 million loss. These funds are traced back to assets seized by the U.S. Department of Justice related to the infamous 2016 Bitfinex hack.
According to analytics by Arkham, the government-controlled wallet is still short by some $1.2 million from the initial $20 million loss. These funds trace their origin to assets connected with the notorious 2016 Bitfinex hack seized by the U.S. Department of Justice earlier.
Arkham Intelligence Raises Concerns
There was activity in US government crypto wallets earlier. Seized assets had been pulled out of Aave. The total amount moved from government-held funds was around $20 million. Arkham Intelligence flagged the activity, mentioning that about US$20 million in USDC, USDT, aUSDC, and ETH had been suspiciously transferred from an address associated with the US government.
In particular, this address, “0xc9E,” allegedly received the seized funds linked to the Bitfinex hackers through nine different government-linked addresses, one of which-“0xE2F”-was mentioned in the court documents related to the Bitfinex case.
The court documents against Bitfinex hackers Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Rhiannon Morgan named other addresses attributed to Aave, Curve Finance, and Yearn Finance, among wallet “0xE2F.” They demonstrated possessions of about 1.99 million USDT in the Yearn’s Liquidity Pool address “0xaC8”, 3.69 million USDT in the “0xE2F” address, and 1.7 million USDT in another Yearn address “0x681”.
After the transfer, Arkham noticed that the funds were transferred to wallet “0x348,” where they appeared to be sold for ETH. Arkham suspected that the attacker had begun laundering the assets through addresses linked to a money-laundering service.
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