Over $8 million from KuCoin hack is on the move

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Over $8 million from the KuCoin hack is on the move. According to the digital currency tracker Whale Alert, five different digital currencies stolen from the September 25th KuCoin hack have been transferred to unknown wallets.

According to Whale Alert, the hacker moved 8,797,634 REQ ($154,524) , 26,590,851 DRGN ($1,006,216), 1,774,065,271 DX ($2,424,841), 3,066,372,838 DENT ($489,450), and 20,572,012 TRAC ($4,194,787) to an “unknown wallet” on November 4th. That being said, a total of $8,269,818 million is on the move.

Where is the money going?

According to the blockchain analytic company Elliptic, the KuCoin hacker is in the process of laundering the funds. As of October 30th, the hackers were laundering a portion of the funds through the BTC mixer, ChipMixer. But as of November 2nd, Elliptic reports that the hacker is using the BTC mixer Wasabi Wallet to launder the money. 

Why Wasabi Wallet? Because Wasabi Wallet has a feature called “CoinJoin,” which is a,

“A mechanism by which multiple participants combine their coins (or UTXOs, to be more precise) into one large transaction with multiple inputs and multiple outputs. An observer cannot determine which output belongs to which input, and neither can the participants themselves. This makes it difficult for outside parties to trace where a particular coin originated from and where it was sent to (as opposed to regular bitcoin transactions, where there is usually one sender and one receiver).

In other words, Wasabi Wallet easily allows criminals to commit crimes and leave no evidence behind. In the past, the hacker has also used decentralized exchanges like UniSwap to liquidate their stolen funds.

Hiding behind the election?

Some observers believe that the KuCoin hacker decided to move millions of stolen money today (November 4) because many market participants have their attention turned to the presidential election in the United States. With a majority of the world focused on the outcome of the election as well as when the official results will be released, fewer people than usual have their attention on the digital currency markets and the bad actors within them.