Monthly Archives: Oktober 2020

Part of the Bitcoin (BTC) coming from the hack of crypto fair Kucoin is on the move. This suggests blockchain analysis company Elliptic.

Reportedly, the hackers are trying to erase the traces with a mixer.
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Hack Kucoin

Almost two months ago it became clear that a lot of Bitcoin had been stolen from Kucoin’s hot wallet. In total it would amount to more than $200 million. The fair wrote in one of their reports that besides Bitcoin also a lot of Ether and other ERC-20 tokens had been stolen from the hot wallets. The assets in the cold wallets did remain safe.

These ERC-20 tokens quickly went through UniSwap. So they were kind of laundered and exchanged for other crypt currencies. But the hackers also got their hands on 1008 BTC. These are now also mixed.

According to Tom Robinson, researcher and co-founder of the Elliptic, the stolen Bitcoin were moved earlier this week.

„Kucoin’s thief has now started moving the stolen Bitcoin. The process is underway, but 425 of the 1008 stolen BTC have now been sent to ChipMixer, a mixing service. This started on Monday morning“

ChipMixer makes it possible to mix UTXO’s with those of other people. This way you can (partially) obscure the origin of the coins. You throw as it were your Bitcoin on a pile with someone else’s and then get that of someone else back. In this way, there is no longer a real relationship between the new and the old output.

Mixer

With ChipMixer, users can deposit their Bitcoin and receive so-called „chips“ that amount to the same amount. Users can split and merge their chips before withdrawing them again. This allows users to place „bets“ that can double the size of a particular chip. You can also reduce this number by donating them to other people.

„Even if you assume with the analysis of the blockchain that there are changes with these chips, we cannot predict how much people have lost or won or how much you have donated.

Part of the total $200 million stolen money has already returned to Kucoin because other scholarships have confiscated it. This is undoubtedly one of the reasons why the hackers use both the decentralized UniSwap and ChipMixer.

Retail investors are buying Bitcoin, explains CryptoQuant CEO

In the days leading up to the recent Bitcoin price increase, stablecoins have gone crazy, showing unprecedented behavior.

On October 18, stablecoin transfers on exchanges reached record highs of 60,000 and 56,000 respectively, according to data provided by CryptoQuant. The resource information tracked USDT on Ethereum, PAX, USDC, TUSD, DAI, SAI, BUSD, HUSD and USDK. As for the total inflow of all stablecoins in terms of dollar value, no unusual trends were found.

Ki Young Ju, CEO of CryptoQuant, explained to Cointelegraph that although the inflows were not huge in dollar value, they indicated a bullish trend among retail investors:

„More deposits from more retail investors usually means that market sentiment is becoming bullish.

According to Ju, the high number of addresses and transactions in the market indicates that the inflows came from a large number of retail investors rather than a few large players. The assumption is that investors send stablecoins to exchanges when they intend to convert them into other crypto assets, mainly Bitcoins. In recent days, Tether has issued $450 million on the Tron network (TRX). The CTO of the company Paolo Ardoino has made it clear that the sum has been authorised, but not yet issued:

„PSA: the $300 million is an inventory replenishment on the Tron network. This is an authorized but not issued transaction, so this sum will be used as inventory for the next period issue requests“.

During 2020, Tether p’s market capitalization quadrupled, starting the year at $4 billion and rising to $16 billion at the time of writing. Meanwhile, Bitcoin’s reserves on major exchanges fell below BTC 2.5 million for the first time in two years.