A hacker plundered $20 million worth of crypto from a wallet affiliated with the US government, according to the digital asset deanonymizing platform Arkham.
Arkham notes the exploiter stole the crypto from a government address affiliated with funds seized from hackers who hit the exchange Bitfinex in 2016.
The government address hacker stole $20 million worth of the stablecoins USDT, USDC, Aave USDC (aUSDC) and Ethereum (ETH). Arkham says they have begun selling the proceeds for ETH and funneling the crypto through a suspicious address linked to a money-laundering service.
The US government address hadn’t moved any crypto for eight months prior to the hack.
In July, a different US government address moved more than $2 billion worth of Bitcoin (BTC) seized from the illicit online marketplace known as the Silk Road. Arkham said at the time that the coin shifting likely represented “a 10,000 BTC deposit to an institutional custody/service.”
In April, multiple on-chain crypto tracker firms noted a US government address sent more than $131 million worth of seized BTC to a Coinbase Prime wallet.
Julio Moreno, the head of research at the blockchain analytics firm CryptoQuant, said the 2,000 Bitcoin sent to Coinbase were sold. He also noted the BTC came from the trove that was seized from James Zhong, who pleaded guilty to wire fraud after being accused of manipulating transactions on the Silk Road.
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