Crypto Gone Dark: When $1.4B Disappears Like Your Socks in the Laundry 🧦💸

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It so happened, in the hustle and bustle of our age, that near to a third — more precisely, twenty-seven parts in every hundred — of the vast hoard, some $1.4 billion, spirited away from Bybit’s coffers, vanished into shadows deeper than the darkest Russian winter. Such is the tale as told by the keeper of the exchange, one Ben Zhou, who spoke thus upon the bustling digital telegraph known as X.

He confided, with the air of a man barely concealing a sigh, that while over two-thirds remains traced along the winding paths of the chain, a mere four parts in a hundred are shackled and frozen like forgotten lakes in Siberia’s frost.

Recall, if you will, that the robbers descended in the month of February, carting off Ethereum and its staked kin, totaling close to $1.5 billion — an escapade perhaps grander than all that sconce-lit tales of highwaymen might suggest.

Experts of the ledger, with names as mysterious as ZachXBT and the shadowy Cryptologic sages of Elliptic, point their accusing fingers toward the Lazarus Group: a spectral crew from the far North Korean steppes, famed — or infamous — across many a telling for their daring raids amid the virtual corridors of coin.

Ben Zhou narrated how these cunning Northmen hid their glittering spoil through a labyrinth of mixers and bridges; an intricate dance, akin to placing one’s valuables beneath a dozen fur coats, each wrapped within the other.

“First, a portion of the tainted bitcoin bathed itself in the Wasabi waters. A small fraction then slipped furtively into CryptoMixer, Tornado Cash, and Railgun’s smoky halls. Following this, journeys thru Thorchain, eXch, Lombard, LiFi, Stargate, and SunSwap unfolded like a grand ball, culminating in the shadowy bazaars of OTC and peer-to-peer exchanges,” whispered the oracle Zhou.

By fate’s cruel jest, the very portal named eXch declared its imminent closure come May, victim to whispers and accusations of laundering dark gold — certainly a coincidence as amusing as a bear trying on ballet slippers.

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2025-04-22 17:51