US government hacked $20 million in crypto
The US government has reportedly lost around $20 million in crypto following a cyberattack, according to blockchain analysts at Arkham Intelligence.
Arkham said it detected that the cryptocurrency had been “suspiciously moved” from a government wallet to an unknown wallet. The funds moved consisted of stablecoins such as USDC, USDT, aUSDC, and Ethereum (ETH). Stolen coins are now sold for ETH.
“The funds were moved to wallet 0x348 which began selling the funds for ETH. We believe the attacker has already started laundering the funds through suspicious addresses linked to a money laundering service,” Arkham said.
Another blockchain analytics company called Lookonchain said the attacker stole US$13.7 million in USDC, US$5.44 million in USDC, US$1.12 million in USDT, and 447,000 US dollars of ETH.
Arkham’s identification of the activity prompted ZachXBT to investigate the incident, who also said a theft had occurred.
“TLDR, this is likely theft because the funds are linked to the US government [U.S. government] began accessing instant exchanges such as N Exchange, Switchain and Binance Nested Service,” said ZachXBT.
~$20M IN US GOVERNMENT ASSETS MOVED TO NEW ADDRESS pic.twitter.com/MXgi9mderO
– Arkham (@ArkhamIntel) October 24, 2024
Arkham also said that the addresses involved in the incident were associated with the Bitfinex exchange hack in 2016.
According to 21.co, the US government owns $13.7 billion in bitcoin (BTC), 44% of which comes from the Bitfinex hack seizure that occurred in January 2022.
