US government may fall victim to $20 million crypto hack

Key Takeaways

Over $20 million in Ethereum and stablecoins were stolen from a US government-controlled wallet.
The theft is connected to the wallet involved in the 2016 Bitfinex hack.

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The US government may have suffered a $20 million exploit that targeted its crypto wallet on October 24, according to reports from Arkham and blockchain sleuth ZachXBT.

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$20M in USDC, USDT, aUSDC and ETH has been suspiciously moved from a USG-linked address 0xc9E6E51C7dA9FF1198fdC5b3369EfeDA9b19C34c to… pic.twitter.com/UXn1atE1Wx

— Arkham (@ArkhamIntel) October 24, 2024

The incident was first flagged earlier today after a US government-linked address, which had been dormant for eight months, made some suspicious transfers.

According to data tracked by Arkham, initially, $1.25 million in USDT and $5.5 million in USDC were moved from the DeFi platform Aave. Subsequently, approximately $13.7 million in aUSDC and $446,000 in Ethereum were transferred to a newly established wallet. These funds had previously been seized by US authorities during the investigation of the Bitfinex hack.

Further movements included about $320,000 in Ethereum sent to various exchanges and $80,000 distributed to several smaller wallets. Investigations are ongoing to trace the laundered funds and assess the full extent of the breach. The US government has yet to release an official statement regarding this incident.

Arkham noted that the attacker had begun selling these assets for ETH and may have been laundering the proceeds through various suspicious addresses. At the time of reporting, US authorities still hold over $14 billion in total.

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