The crypto industry is still reeling from its largest hack to date. Crypto exchange Bybit lost more than $1.4 billion from its cold wallet. Recently, hackers were revealed to be North Korea’s infamous Lazarus group. They are busy moving assets around, and some have found their way to wallets linked to Solana rug pulls.
On Monday, February 24, online investigator ZachXBT revealed new details in the evolving Lazarus case. Hackers are now actively trying to launder the crypto, hoping that complex transactions will mask the fund’s origins.
To counteract this attempt, ZachXBT compiled over 920 addresses that received funds from the Lazarus hack. However, his investigation found that one of the addresses laundering money was connected to memecoin rug pulls.
One address received 1.08 USDC from the Bybit hack through a Solana bridge to BSC. The address then distributed these funds between more than 30 other addresses. According to ZachXBT, one of these addresses launched and traded tokens on Pump.Fun.
Pump.Fun is a popular platform for memecoin launches, as it makes creating tokens very easy. However, it has also gained popularity among crypto scammers, who use the site for rug pulls targeting unsuspecting investors. This has prompted speculation over North Korea using the stolen funds to launch rug pulls.
Bybit Hack: What Happens Next?
The $1.4 billion hack, the largest in crypto history, has prompted significant discussion about what happens next. The Lazarus group is directly tied to North Korea, which uses the proceeds from hacking to fund its operations, including its military.
If the Lazarus group manages to launder the money, this will go directly to fund North Korea, a country sanctioned by most of the developed world. Consequently, many are calling for drastic measures, such as a hard fork of the Ethereum blockchain.
In response to the hack, several people have called for Ethereum to respond as it did with the DAO hack. Supporters of the idea suggest that the network should perform a hard fork to reverse the transaction.
While this is technically possible, it is unlikely to happen. First, as Ethereum is a decentralized chain, achieving consensus among all validators may be difficult. Furthermore, a hard fork would go against Ethereum’s decentralized ethos. At present, security firms are urging platforms to blacklist all addresses associated with the hack.
READ MORE: ZachXBT Reveals Lazarus Group Behind $1.3B Bybit Hack
