Gold Round Coin on Black Surface

Ronin Hacked Money is Ending Up in Bitcoin Network from Cryptocurrency Mixers; Report

  • Reportedly, the vast majority of the Ronin hacker’s ETH funds have been deposited to Tornado Cash. 
  • According to the report, ChipMixer, and Blender hold most of the hacker’s stolen funds after the transfers with approximately 3460 and 439 Bitcoins respectively.
  • The Axie Infinity sidechain, Ronin Network, issued a community warning on March 29th regarding a security breach detailing 173,600 ETH and 25.5 million USDC, totaling a $610 million loss. 

The latest report on hacked Ronin crypto assets shows the attacker has redirected the stolen funds to the Bitcoin network from several crypto mixer platforms.

According to an on-chain enthusiast from Twitter dubbed @blitezero, the stolen funds have been deposited to crypto mixers including ChipMixer, and Blender.

Reportedly, the vast majority of the Ronin hacker’s ETH funds have been deposited to Tornado Cash. Otherwise, approximately 6,250 Ether have been deposited to cryptocurrency exchanges including Huobi, FTX, and  Crypto.com.

According to the report, ChipMixer, and Blender hold most of the hacker’s stolen funds with approximately 3460 and 439 Bitcoins respectively.

The Axie Infinity sidechain, Ronin Network, issued a community warning on March 29th regarding a security breach detailing 173,600 ETH and 25.5 million USDC, totaling a $610 million loss. 

Closer Look at Ronin Bridge Attack

The Ronin Bridge attack is the largest crypto attack after last year’s PolyNetwork, which saw over $600 million compromised.

In the Ronin Bridge hack, the attacker used compromised private keys to establish withdrawals in just two transactions. Notably, the hack occurred on March 23, but Ronin officials allegedly discovered it after users reported that they were unable to withdraw 5,000 in ETH from the bridge. 

Incidentally, the Ronin case dates back to November of last year, when Sky Mavis asked Axie DAO for assistance in distributing free transactions. Due to the high volume of users, the Axie DAO whitelisted Sky Mavis, allowing the protocol to sign various transactions on its behalf, a process that was discontinued in December. Access to the whitelist, on the other hand, was not revoked, allowing an attacker to sign from the Axie DAO validator via gas-free RPC. 

Notably, United States investigators believe the Ronin Bridge incident was caused by the North Korean cybercrime organization, Lazarus Group.

While the blame game continues, the Ronin attacker is showing blockchain developers major loopholes in most crypto protocols. Moreover, the stolen funds are moving about freely without the community’s approval or any interventions.

However, the issue of blockchain intervention has been heavily debated since the early days of the Bitcoin whitepaper on double-spending. 

The urgent and most persistent question is, should blockchain hard fork after every major hack to save users funds?

Furthermore, every ‘honest’ player will have access to their funds and the affected users easily refunded their assets. Perhaps the answer is best given by major mining players including Binance, Coinbase, and the rest.

Side Notes

Meanwhile, the AXS token, the governance token for the Axie Infinity game, is trading at around $13.65, down 82 percent in the past year. The asset has a market capitalization of approximately $1.2 billion.

Otherwise, the total cryptocurrency market volume over the last 24 hours is $60.95B, which makes a 15.33 percent decrease. The total volume in DeFi is currently $4.91B, 8.06 percent of the total crypto market 24-hour volume. The volume of all stablecoins is now $56.13B, which is 92.10 percent of the total crypto market 24-hour volume.

Worth noting, that Bitcoin’s dominance is currently 40.28 percent, hereby representing an increase of 0.18% over the day.

Rebecca Davidson Verified

Rebecca is a Senior Staff Writer at BitcoinWisdom, working hard to bring you the latest breaking news in the cryptocurrency market. In the words of Elon Musk “Buy stock in several companies that make products & services that *you* believe in. Only sell if you think their products & services are trending worse. Don’t panic when the market does. This will serve you well in the long-term.”

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