FTX hacker moves over $38 million in past few days

The individual or entity behind suspicious withdrawals from the collapsed crypto exchange FTX — commonly called the "FTX hacker" — moved 7,500 ether ($12.6 million) today.

The entity transferred 22,500 ETH ($38 million) over the past two days, according to the analyst firm Lookonchain. This included 2,500 ether ($4 million) in fund movement on Saturday, which involved swapping ether for bitcoin through Thorchain and Railgun, as reported by The Block.

The FTX hacker holds over 163,000 ETH ($275 million) in ether across several wallets, as noted by Lookonchain.

The movement of funds by the FTX hacker comes when the exchange’s former CEO and founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, prepares for the start of his trial on fraud and money-laundering charges this coming Tuesday.

The once-prominent centralized exchange, FTX, was a victim of one of the largest hacks in 2022. An unidentified hacker stole substantial crypto assets from the exchange’s wallets shortly after Bankman-Fried filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and departed from the company. The losses were estimated to exceed $400 million, per a report by the analytics firm Chainalysis.

The aftermath of the FTX hack

In December 2022, the U.S. Justice Department said it was investigating the incident to identify the individual or entity behind the hack.

While the hacker’s identity remains a mystery, Bankman-Fried indicated in an interview that an insider, potentially a “former employee” or another malicious actor, may have acquired the private keys to FTX’s crypto wallets.

John J. Ray III, who took over as CEO of FTX after its November 2022 downfall, disclosed in a prepared testimony that FTX kept the private keys to its wallets unencrypted and employed subpar security measures — circumstances that might have made the hack more feasible.