Who misses 4,000 BTC? The On-Chain tracking service Whale-Alert registered on Aug. 19, a Bitcoin transaction worth $238 million. This in itself is not unusual, as institutional investors in particular regularly move huge BTC stock. However, according to a post by On-Chain security analyst ZachXBT, some clues point to a possible theft.

The unknown wallet of the "potential victim" immediately moved the coins to several crypto platforms, complicating tracking back. Among these platforms were ThorChain, the crypto exchange KuCoin and the anonymization service Railgun.

Seven hours ago a suspicious transfer was made from a potential victim for 4064 BTC ($238M)

Transaction hash
4b277ba298830ea538086114803b9487558bb093b5083e383e94db687fbe9090

Funds were quickly transferred to ThorChain, eXch, Kucoin, ChangeNow, Railgun, Avalanche Bridge.
— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) August 19, 2024

First suspicions of the On-Chain expert being on the North Korean hacker group Lazarus. However, the way the BTC was moved would speak against the typical modus operandi of the notorious hackers, according to ZachXBT.

Further analyses of SlowMist showed that the coins temporarily came into contact with wallets of bankrupt crypto company Genesis Global Trading. These were allegedly "frantic money laundering attempts." Whether these attempts came from Genesis itself, or whether the company itself was the victim of the theft, remains unclear for now.

Finally ZachXBT the $230 million hack of the Indian crypto exchange WazirX back on Lazarus. In the recent theft, it remains to be seen who is behind it, according to ZachXBT.

Meanwhile, the huge amount of BTC in the hands of suspected hackers is causing concern about the BTC exchange rate. According to the On-Chain expert, previous transactions from the suspected wallet indicate only small BTC sales. Therefore, the consequences were mild.