Hackers who drained more than $300 million from Coinbase have yet again been spotted transferring huge amounts of Ethereum (ETH) through Tornado Cash, a popular crypto mixer that helps an illegal trail of transactions.
On-chain monitoring service Onchain Lens reported that the wallet recently received 5,514 ETH, a whopping $24.04 million, and has been withdrawing the amounts almost daily.
This development has reopened questions and concerns about the magnitude of the theft and how convoluted it gets to track stolen digital assets once they pass through privacy-centric avenues.
Complex Maneuvers Across Multiple Blockchains
On Sunday, August 26, the hackers undertook several very complex steps with their stolen funds.
The wallet traded DAI stablecoins for USDC, which bridged assets across to the Solana blockchain. The hackers purchased 38,126 SOL at an average price of $209 per minted token.
Now that Solana values are near $202, a loss has already been incurred by the hackers from this trade.
The situation illustrates the scale of their money laundering activities and the risk of losing a significant amount of money, changing large amounts of volatile assets and different blockchains to obscure their activities.
Also Read: Hacker Builds 4,863 Ethereum Holdings With $400M Stolen Coinbase Funds, Details Inside
History of Large-Scale Transactions Linked to Hackers
Notably, this is not the first instance of the wallet being associated with large transactions involving stolen money. In July, the same address received close to 5,500 ETH in two transactions totaling almost $15 million.
Also, just weeks before, the hackers converted over 26,000 ETH for over $69 million, and it is speculated they were attempting to disperse the stolen funds and hide them.
The large movements of funds appear premeditated as multiple assets could be cycled through, which would create an additional challenge for investigators to track and recover their funds.
Earlier, independent investigator ZachXBT stated that around $330 million has been stolen from victims in advanced social engineering schemes.
The continuous movement of these funds reveals the unresolved risks from advanced cybercrime threat actors targeting significant exchanges and their users.
Also Read: Coinbase Data Breach Hacker Mocks ZachXBT After Major $42.5M Swap
Broader Market Impact Amid Ethereum’s Price Movements
Amidst several large movements of Ethereum, the market for Ethereum has been steady.
ETH is priced at $4,409.10 with a 24-hour trading volume of nearly $36.8 billion. The token has risen modestly by just 0.52% in the last 24 hours, and is still down by 7.12% in the past week.
Notably, it got to its ATH price days back, hitting the $4946 price level on the 24th of August. Ethereum has a circulating supply of 120 million ETH, and is valued at a market cap of around $531 billion.
The Coinbase hack is a prime example of the vulnerabilities that continue to exist in the crypto space; Ethereum continues to demonstrate that the investors still have a level of faith in the market despite some major breaches.
Also Read: Coinbase Executive States ‘Small Possibility Of Hack’ Over $8.6 Billion Bitcoin Movement