Even as hacked crypto exchange Cryptopia goes into liquidation, the thieves who cleared at least $16 million in ethereum appear to have begun moving the stolen crypto into multiple wallets.
In January Cryptopia went offline before announcing that it had “suffered a security breach which resulted in significant losses.” Although the company never disclosed the amount, independent analytics firms estimated that a hacker or hackers made off with over $16 million in ethereum and other tokens.
On May 15 the exchange shut down trading and posted a message regarding liquidation:
“Despite the efforts of management to reduce cost and return the business to profitability, it was decided the appointment of liquidators was, in the best interests of customers, staff and other stakeholders. …
“Given the complexities involved we expect the investigation to take months rather than weeks.”
Image courtesy of CoinFirm
Now, according to an analysis by CoinFirm, the hackers are moving that cash into separate wallets, including two directly connected to Huobi.
“The Cryptopia hacker moved 30,790 ETH (~$7.67M) from the last red address to the yellow one which is a new address of the hacker as of May 20, 2019 at 01:43:57 AM +UTC. The yellow address still has got 29,770 ETH,” said CoinFirm’s Krystian Duda.
Two other addresses – here and here – received a combined 1010 ETH while another 10 ETH landed in what appears to be a Huobi deposit address and then went to a Huobi hot wallet. This suggests the hackers are preparing to pull cash out via these exchanges.
Screenshot from Etherscan
As of about 2pm EST on May 20 another 30,788 ETH moved into a new set of wallets.
Image courtesy of CoinFirm
While there is no telling what exactly is happening to this ether as it moves from wallet to wallet, it’s clear that the $16 million isn’t going to sit still for long.
Cryptopia image via Shutterstock.