On-Chain Crypto Detective Exposes 3 Misbeliefs

The FTX fiasco still looms fresh. Moreover, new developments seem to add further confusion to the whole matter. No one expected FTX to fall, let alone be hacked after it fell, leading to more than $650 million being drained. The hack was followed by a series of stories, some of which may or may not be true.

Onchain detective “ZachXBT” took it upon themself to share a few points regarding the hack. ZachXBT posted a lengthy thread on Twitter, debunking three of the biggest misconceptions that he felt needed to be addressed.

What did many get wrong about the FTX hack?

The first misconception is that the Bahamian officials were behind the hack. The second is that the exchanges know who the hacker is, and the third misconception is that the hacker is trading memecoins.

Although the perpetrator has not been officially identified, the Securities Commission of the Bahamas (SCB) said in a statement on November 17 that it has mandated the transfer of all FTX’s digital assets to its digital wallet.

The “0x59” wallet address linked to the hacker, according to ZachXBT, was a black hat address and was not related to either the FTX team or the SCB. This is because the address began selling tokens for ETH, DAI, and BNB, using a variety of bridges so that the crypto couldn’t be frozen as of November 12th.

The wallet address selling Ethereum for renBTC and then utilizing RenBridge, according to ZachXBT, was his last piece of information. He believes that this transaction will most likely result in money being sent to “a mixer at some time in the future.”

ZachXBT also addressed the issue regarding the hacker’s identity. Kraken’s Chief Security Officer claimed to have discovered the identity of the hacker. According to Zach, the FTX group was probably merely utilizing Kraken to secure funds to a multi-signature wallet on Tron because the FTX hot wallet ran out of gas for transactions.

ZachXBT criticized the claim made by blockchain analytics company CertiK that the FTX hacker is involved in the trading of memecoins.

Instead, the blockchain investigator contends that the transfers were “spoofed” on the Ethereum network, citing a blog post from Harith Kamarul of the Etherscan community from March that described how transactions can be faked.