FTX hacker begins converting hundreds of millions of dollars worth of ETH into BTC
Anyways the only thing crazier than Sam and Caroline running around is the fact that the FTX hacker has still somehow not been caught and is apparently starting to cash out.
For context FTX was hacked for almost 500 million dollars worth of crypto shortly after the exchange went down.
It was initially believed that Sam or another FTX employee had begun siphoning assets from the exchange to make a getaway.
Shortly afterwards however Kraken’s chief security officer announced that the exchange had identified the hacker after they’d tried cashing out using Kraken, now this begs the obvious question of who the hacker is since they’re still apparently at large.
In any case they managed to convert most of the crypto they stole into ETH using decentralized exchanges.
This actually made the FTX hacker one of the largest holders of in the world.
Early last week the hacker started to convert some of the stolen ETH into BTC using different kinds of wrapped bitcoin, specifically the hacker swapped eth4, wbtc and then swapped the wbtc for Ren BTC.
This is because Ren BTC can be unwrapped using Ren protocol in a trustless manner, in other words Ren BTC tokens on the Ethereum blockchain can be redeemed for actual BTC on the Bitcoin blockchain without having to use a trusted third party.
By contrast WBTC requires exchanging WBTC tokens for BTC using Bitco which would certainly prevent the FTX hacker from cashing out.
So the FTX hacker dumped tens of thousands of heath worth tens of millions of dollars and this made a predictable dent in ETH’s price.
It looks like the hacker was only able to dump so much however because they started splitting up their remaining ETH holdings into separate wallets.
As for the stolen BTC it’s possible that the hacker has been swapping it for other cryptocurrencies using Atomic swaps, the problem is that this would be hard to prove as these types of complex transactions look like regular transactions on chain following Bitcoin’s Taproot upgrade from last year.
Still it’s possible that some of this BTC is being converted into Litecoin.
Given that it recently introduced a privacy preserving sidechain this would actually explain why LTC pumps so much recently and in my opinion it’s a much better explanation than the next Litecoin halving which isn’t expected until sometime next summer.
It would be a logical move as well given that there are as many or more points of withdrawal for LTC as there are for BTC.
Regardless it’s clear that the FTX hacker isn’t an amateur, it stands to reason then that they wouldn’t be dumb enough to get caught by trying to cash out using Kraken.
So this brings us back to the question of their identity which remains unknown, one of the many mysteries of the FTX-Alameda Saga.
Now regarding ETH and BTC the FTX hackers moved to swap ETH for other cryptocurrencies suggests that their selling could occasionally suppress ETH’s price for the foreseeable future, it could have a similar effect on BTC assuming the hacker is in fact swapping it for cryptocurrencies on other blockchains.
