A current market valuation of $288 million places the exploiter’s Ethereum haul in the millions. Last week, they made a fortune exploiting the now-bankrupt FTX exchange, placing them among Ether whales. More than $663 million in crypto assets were drained from the wallets of the embattled FTX exchange just one day after it filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy. According to Elliptic, a company that provides blockchain intelligence.
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There is evidence that Elliptic needs to include $477 million of these tokens. Thieves converted a large portion of those tokens into Ethereum (ETH). Also, FTX is believed to have moved $186 million of tokens into secure storage, worth more than a hundred different types.
According to a report on Nov. 15, the attacker was still sapping wallets four days later. Analysts called it “on-chain spoofing.”
As of Nov. 15, the attacker holds about $338 million in crypto assets, according to blockchain security firm Beacoin.
FTX Accounts Drainer (0x59AB…32b) has conducted multiple swap and cross-chain operations for the past day and currently holds ~$338,598,702 of assets.
The majority of the funds are held in the
0x59ABf3837Fa962d6853b4Cc0a19513AA031fd32b address.Current balance: pic.twitter.com/SMrkbcwULL
— Beosin Alert (@BeosinAlert) November 15, 2022
At today’s market price, 228,523 ETH is valued at around $288.8 million, according to the wallet address.
Based on the number of ETH held by this account, it ranks 35th among Ethereum holders.
The Beacon Chain deposit contract holds around 15 million ETH, making it the top Ethereum holder per CoinCarp’s Ethereum rich list. The top 20 are overwhelmed by crypto exchanges, layer-2 protocols, and decentralized payment bridges (Defi).
A third of all ETH is held by the top 50 ETH wallets, with the top 20 holding 27.7%.
Some speculated that it could have been an inside job since the exploits appeared on both FTX and FTX.US. In an interview with Reuters, Hugh Brooks, director of security operations at analytics firm Certik, suggested that evidence might be on the chain. On Nov. 15, he told that an insider with access to these wallets can move funds unless a private key has been compromised.
A potential offload of the 35th-largest holder of Ethereum hasn’t affected the price of the cryptocurrency.
According to CoinGecko, ETH was trading at $1,260 as of this writing. A loss of around 23% has been registered since the FTX debacle was formed.
Related: Tether has frozen a 48 million USDT asset on Tron Owned by FTX.