Hacker Who Stole $23 Million from Crypto Exchange Bittrue Starts Laundering Proceeds Through Tornado Cash

A hacker who stole $23 million from crypto exchange Bittrue in 2023 has started to launder the proceeds through Tornado Cash, according to Debank data cited by EmberCN.

A hacker who stole $23 million from crypto exchange Bittrue earlier this year has started to launder the proceeds through Tornado Cash, a blockchain privacy protocol, according to data from Web3 analytics firm Debank cited by Chinese crypto media outlet EmberCN.

The hacker sent 30,000 ether (ETH) to Tornado Cash, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market value traded as high as $2,450 on Friday, and had dropped to as low as $1,472 in April before rebounding to trade as high as $2,873 this week, CoinDesk data show. The hacker made a $9.37 million in profit on their transaction, EmberCN said.

After several transactions to shift ether to different addresses, the hacker, whose address is not publicly known, finally sent the stolen crypto to Tornado Cash, rendering it largely untraceable.

The hacker had stolen the crypto in January this year when they exploited a vulnerability in Bittrue’s smart contract.

The crypto exchange, which is registered in the Seychelles and has an operating office in China, had announced the hack in January and said it was working to recover the stolen funds.

A crypto investor lost nearly $1.67 billion to hacks and exploits in the first quarter of this year as the industry struggled to constrain the criminal underworld despite a rapid advance in institutional adoption.

The hacker's on-chain trail on Etherscan shows that some funds were also laundered in April and between that period there were also several deposits to decentralized derivatives exchange HyperLiquid.