A crypto wallet associated with the BTC-e exchange, which has been linked to the 2014 Mt. Gox hack, made its largest transaction since August 2017, sending a total of 10,000 bitcoin, worth approximately $165 million, to two unidentified recipients.
According to a Chainalysis report published on November 23, While today’s $165 million withdrawal is the largest since April 2018, BTC-e began withdrawing funds from its wallet nearly a month ago.
After a year of near dormancy, BTC-e today sent $165M in Bitcoin to a group of personal wallets, exchange deposit addresses, and other services – its largest withdrawal since Apr 2018. Read on those tx’s and others from the rogue exchange in recent weeks. https://t.co/HxamLo1lrL pic.twitter.com/GSZyrm8iZu
— Chainalysis (@chainalysis) November 24, 2022
On October 26, both BTC-e and WEX, a cryptocurrency exchange widely assumed to be the successor of BTC-e, sent small amounts of Bitcoin to Webmoney, a Russian electronic payments service that accepts cryptocurrency. On November 11, BTC-e made a test payment from its wallet before transferring approximately 100 Bitcoin indirectly to an exchange two days later, on November 21.
Approx 10,000 BTC, worth approximately $167 million, were transferred to two unidentified recipients. Around 9,950 Bitcoin remain in personal wallets, while the rest was transferred through a series of intermediaries to four deposit addresses at two large exchanges. “In the case of Exchange 1, depicted above, our analysis suggests a Russian exchange may have served as an intermediary to launder this BTC-e money. ” reads the report.
Ki Young Ju, co-founder and CEO of blockchain analytics firm Cryptoquant, confirmed the findings, highlighting that 0.6% of the funds were sent to exchanges and may represent sell-side liquidity.
7-year-old 10,000 $BTC moved today.
— Ki Young Ju (@ki_young_ju) November 24, 2022
No surprise, it’s from criminals, like most of the old Bitcoins. It’s the BTC-e exchange wallet related to the 2014 Mt. Gox hack.
They sent 65 BTC to @hitbtc a few hours ago, so it’s not a gov auction or something.https://t.co/6LnCxFAJfX https://t.co/YdPrvJafxY pic.twitter.com/Sp2higUqbq
Ki Young Ju also stated that 65 BTC was sent to HitBTC just a few hours ago, implying that it was not a government auction or similar. Following that, he advised the exchange to suspend the account to suspicious activity.
Mt. Gox, the first bitcoin exchange, was robbed of 744,408 BTC and forced to close its doors permanently in 2014. BTC-e was a cryptocurrency exchange Russia-focused that was shut down by US authorities in 2017 for its role in laundering funds associated with various forms of cybercrime, including cryptocurrency stolen in the Mt. Gox exchange hack.
According to Chainalysis, BTC-e still held “a substantial amount of Bitcoin” at the time of its shutdown, and in April 2018 moved over 30,000 BTC out of its service wallet.
