- Bybit has traced 88% of stolen funds, while 7.59% is in the dark and 3.54% is frozen.
- Crypto mixers like Wasabi and TornadoCash are being used to hide the stolen funds.
- Large-community collaboration is needed to decode and recover the missing funds.
Bybit’s CEO Ben Zhou has provided an update on the exchange’s ongoing investigation into the recent hack that resulted in $1.4 billion in stolen crypto assets. As of March 20, 2025, Zhou revealed that 88.87% of the stolen funds remain traceable, while a concerning 7.59% of the funds have been hidden through crypto-mixing services. This is a nightmare case for Bybit as hackers complicate the trail of funds looted.
Funds Breakdown and Obfuscation Efforts
According to Zhou’s executive summary on X, a portion of the stolen funds, approximately 86.29%, has been converted into Bitcoin. This amounts to roughly $1.23 billion, spread across 12,836 Bitcoin wallets. Each wallet contains an average of 1.41 BTC. However, the hackers’ use of crypto mixers such as Wasabi, CryptoMixer, Railgun, and TornadoCash has complicated the process of tracing these assets. These tools scramble the transaction history of the stolen funds, making recovery efforts more difficult.
Zhou went on to say that the hackers began using Bitcoin mixers after the theft, likely to mask their digital footprints. Bybit suspects that more funds will be routed through these anonymizing services, further hindering efforts to decode the stolen transactions. As more funds move through these services, the challenge of tracking and reclaiming stolen assets grows significantly.
Related: Bybit Receives $600M ETH From Mirana Ventures Post $1.5B Hack
Community Efforts to Decode Transactions
In addition to the technical challenges, Zhou urged the crypto community to assist Bybit in decoding the stolen funds’ transactions. The exchange has received over 5,000 community reports, but only 63 were deemed valid. With the increasing use of crypto mixers, Bybit has called for greater collaboration in decoding the complex web of transactions.
Zhou’s tweet highlights the growing need for more community-driven efforts in decoding transactions related to the stolen funds. As mixers continue to confuse the flow of the stolen crypto, the role of the wider crypto community in decoding these movements becomes even more crucial.
The CEO of Bybit has reiterated the imperative of decoding such transactions to recover stolen funds, stating that the decodes have become the toughest challenge for an exchange in recovering its assets.
