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Poloniex Hacker Sends $3.3M Worth of Ether to Tornado Cash

The hacked funds had previously been dormant for 178 days.

Updated May 7, 2024, 5:54 a.m. Published May 7, 2024, 5:51 a.m.
Laptop hacker (Towfiqu Barbhuiya/Unsplash)
Laptop hacker (Towfiqu Barbhuiya/Unsplash)
  • The hacker sent 11 batches of 100 ether to Tornado Cash over a two-hour period.
  • The wallet also sent $32 million worth of bitcoin to an unlabelled wallet last week.

A hacker that stole $125 million from Poloniex's hot wallets in November has sent 1,100 ether (ETH) to sanctioned coin mixer Tornado Cash, according to blockchain data.

The ether, worth roughly $3.3 million, was sent to Tornado Cash in 100 ETH batches on Tuesday, having been dormant for 178 days.

The Poloniex hacker also sent 501 bitcoin (BTC) worth $32 million to an unlabelled wallet on April 30. It still holds a total of $181 million worth of crypto across various blockchains, Arkham data shows.

Tornado Cash is a protocol that allows users to obfuscate crypto tokens by mixing assets across multiple wallets over a prolonged period of time. It was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2022 shortly after it was used by North Korean hacking group Lazarus, which attempted to hide funds secured from the $625 million Axie Infinity exploit.

Blockchain security firm Elliptic said in March that Lazarus Group used Tornado Cash to launder $12 million from the Heco Bridge hack, which occurred shortly after the Poloniex Hack.



Oliver Knight

Oliver Knight joined CoinDesk as a news reporter in April 2022. Before joining CoinDesk, Knight was the Chief Reporter at Coin Rivet for three years. Having graduated with a journalism degree from Birmingham City University, Knight went on to work at various sports publications before diving into the world of Bitcoin in 2014. He does not have any crypto holdings.

picture of Oliver Knight