Axie Infinity’s Ronin Bridge Hacker Starts to Move Stolen Ethereum (ETH)

There has been some activity on the blockchain address that was flagged as being involved in the hack on the Axie Infinity Ronin bridge last month.

There have been several transactions over the past couple of hours from the suspect Ethereum address. The first was the movement of 1,000 ETH valued at approximately $3.5 million to another address.

Several more transactions of 100 ETH subsequently followed, all of them going to the Tornado Cash Ethereum mixing service. The movements were noticed by Chinese crypto analyst Colin Wu on Monday morning.

The address of the hacker who stole $610 million in the Ronin_Network case began to move, transferring 1000 ETH to another address and then 200 ETH to TornadoCash. https://t.co/7RYHCmwght

— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) April 4, 2022

Tracking Stolen Crypto

Major exchanges are seldom used by criminals because most of them now require extensive KYC (know-your-customer) procedures. Even those that do not provide fiat conversions have had to bow to global regulators. However, CryptoPotato did report that some of the funds were moved into exchanges such as FTX, Huobi, and CryptoCom, all of which have vowed to take action.

Malicious actors are more likely to attempt to obfuscate the transactions, often several times, before they can finally cash out into fiat somewhere. The founder of Immutable Vision commented that this could lead to tighter regulations and punishment for legitimate investors.

“This is when privacy blockchains fail and acts as ammunition for stricter regulations which impacts legitimate retail and institutional investors,”

This is exactly what has happened to the traditional banking industry, which is now a minefield of restrictions and bureaucracy for the average Joe.

Tornado Cash has become the weapon of choice for crypto hackers and scammers. It provides private and anonymous transactions for Ethereum and ERC-20 tokens by breaking the on-chain link between source and destination addresses. A perfect solution for someone wanting to move stolen assets.

The Ronin Bridge, which enables cross-chain transfers to and from the Axie Infinity ecosystem, was exploited for more than $610 million in late March. Sky Mavis, the company behind Axie Infinity, has since stated that it is fully committed to reimbursing the victims of the epic heist.

ETH Price Outlook

Ethereum prices are trading flat on the day at around $3,500 at the time of writing, according to CoinGecko. The asset has had a solid fortnight with a gain of 22.4% for the period as it shadowed its big brother.

ETH prices are currently down 28% from their November 10 all-time high of $4,878.