Onchain sleuth ZachXBT has flagged a suspicious switch involving 3,520 Bitcoin (BTC) (valued at $330.7 million) which will point out a serious theft. The transaction, reported on April 28, noticed funds moved from a possible sufferer’s pockets to the tackle bc1qcry…vz55g.
Following the switch, the stolen stash was shortly laundered by way of over six on the spot exchanges and swapped into privacy-focused cryptocurrency Monero (XMR).
The massive-scale conversion led to a pointy 50% spike in XMR’s value, with the token reaching an intraday excessive of $339, based on information from CoinMarketCap.
On the time of writing, XMR has settled barely however stays up 25% previously 24 hours, buying and selling at $289.
When requested whether or not North Korea’s Lazarus Group was behind the assault, ZachXBT dismissed the idea, stating it was “extremely possible it’s not,” suggesting impartial hackers had been accountable.
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Overwhelming majority of hackers use mainstream cryptos
In a current remark to Cointelegraph, Chainalysis famous that almost all legal transactions nonetheless depend on mainstream cryptocurrencies.
“Whereas there are issues of extra criminals transferring to privateness cash for anonymity, the overwhelming majority of legal exercise nonetheless makes use of mainstream cryptocurrencies, resembling Bitcoin, Ethereum and stablecoins,” Chainalysis stated.
The agency added that these belongings stay engaging as a result of they provide the identical advantages to dangerous actors as they do to legit customers — cross-border performance, on the spot settlement, and excessive liquidity.
Chainalysis famous that privateness cash pose limitations for criminals resulting from lowered liquidity and the truth that many main exchanges have delisted belongings like Monero.
“Cryptocurrency is barely helpful if you should purchase and promote items and companies or money out into fiat, and that’s far more tough with privateness cash, particularly as many mainstream exchanges have offboarded the usage of privateness cash, resembling Monero,” they defined.
The agency even stated that blockchain transparency permits regulation enforcement to hint and get better illicit funds, whatever the cryptocurrency used.
In 2024, a leaked Chainalysis video suggested that Monero transactions could be traceable regardless of the privacy-preserving nature of the blockchain.
The video reportedly confirmed how Chainalysis may monitor transactions again to 2021 by way of its personal “malicious” Monero nodes.
Associated: The IRS offers a $625,000 bounty to anyone who can break Monero and Lightning Network
Monero accepted at Spar shops in Switzerland
The suspected laundering operation comes as Monero is gaining wider retail acceptance. Two Spar grocery store areas in Switzerland just lately started accepting XMR for funds.
The announcement, shared by Monero’s official X account, credit partnerships with DFX Swiss and OpenCryptoPay for enabling the mixing.
One consumer, posting on April 25, shared their expertise of buying natural cacao utilizing XMR at a Spar retailer in Kreuzlingen.
In April 2025, Spar first tapped into the crypto market by introducing Bitcoin payments through the Lightning Network at retailers in Zug, Switzerland.
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