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Hackers Are Turning Binance's Stolen Bitcoin Into Other Cryptocurrencies

Another tranche of stolen funds have hit exchanges and are being exchanged for other cryptos, according to a new analysis.

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UPDATE (16 July 2019, 14:51 UTC): A correction has been made to remove the suggestion that all of Binance's stolen BTC has been moved into fiat. Many of the associated exchanges do not offer fiat pairs.

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A new analysis by Coinfirm shows the movement of the bitcoin stolen from Binance into various wallets. The hack, which netted 7,000 BTC, happened on May 7, 2019 at 17:15:24 UTC and the hackers have been moving stolen bitcoin from wallet to wallet.

Now, however, Coinfirm has spotted some activity that suggests the hackers are moving their gains off of exchanges, potentially into other cryptocurrencies.

The first transaction happened here while other transactions followed. Most recently, however, it's become clear that the hacker has begun liquidating the BTC on various exchanges.

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"Analysis of one of the mainchains used by the hacker in layering stolen funds shows that they were able to liquidate at least 1.8087 BTC (21,000.00 USD) on the following exchanges," said Coinfirm's Grant Blaisdell. The transfers happened as follows:

Bitfinex: 0,7934 BTC





Binance: 0,4294 BTC



Bitmex: 0,0022 BTC



KuCoin: 0,0713 BTC



Kuna: 0,2482 BTC



Bitmarket: 0,2560 BTC



Crypterra: 0,0072 BTC



Bitcoin.de: 0,0007 BTC



WazirX: 0,0003 BTC

While caveats apply, it's clear that the hacker moved an amount of BTC to each of these exchanges and there they either left the chain or remained dormant. This is obviously cold comfort to those who are watching their stolen crypto hop from exchange to exchange.

Hacker image via Shutterstock

John Biggs

John Biggs is an entrepreneur, consultant, writer, and maker. He spent fifteen years as an editor for Gizmodo, CrunchGear, and TechCrunch and has a deep background in hardware startups, 3D printing, and blockchain. His work has appeared in Men’s Health, Wired, and the New York Times. He runs the Technotopia podcast about a better future. He has written five books including the best book on blogging, Bloggers Boot Camp, and a book about the most expensive timepiece ever made, Marie Antoinette’s Watch. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Picture of CoinDesk author John Biggs