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The US government has reportedly lost roughly US$20 million in crypto as the result of a cyber attack, according to blockchain analysts from Arkham Intelligence.
Arkham said it detected that the cryptocurrency was “suspiciously moved” from a government wallet to an unknown wallet. The moved funds were made up of stablecoins such as USDC, USDT, aUSDC and ethereum (ETH). The stolen coins are now being sold for ETH.
“The funds were moved to wallet 0x348 which has begun selling the funds to ETH. We believe the attacker has already begun laundering the proceeds through suspicious addresses linked to a money laundering service,” said Arkham.
Another blockchain analytics firm called Lookonchain said the attacker stole US$13.7 million aUSDC, US$5.44 million USDC, US$1.12 million USDT and US$447,000 ETH.
Arkham’s identification of the activity spurred on ZachXBT to investigate the incident, who also said that theft had occurred.
“TLDR it’s a likely theft as funds tied to the USG [U.S. government] started going to instant exchanges like 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 2016 Bitfinex exchange hack.
According to 21.co, the US government has US$13.7 billion in bitcoin (BTC), 44 per cent of which came from the Bitfinex hack seizure, which occurred in January 2022.
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