THORChain earned over $5 million in profits from the huge asset exchange amounts after handling money from the $1.4 billion Bybit hack. People question if THORChain assists illegal trade activities.

A cyber attack on Feb. 21 2023 resulted in Bybit losing $1.4 billion in digital properties to hackers. Security firms analyzing data have found the Bybit theft linked to Lazarus Group which works for North Korea government while the funds were converted to different cross-chain assets through THORChain.

THORChain Processes Billions In Swaps

Crypto users moved more than $5.4 billion through THORChain and the system produced $5.5 million payments via blockchain tracing records. The Feb 27 analyst article showed that THORChain did over $1 billion trades per day while also generating $554000 in revenue that day.

People oppose the protocol’s use in illegal financial transactions. The THORChain developer Pluto ended his role on February 28 following the governance vote to permit transactions from North Korean hackers. I made my final contribution to THORChain on Feb. 27 as declared in my post. People involved in crypto actively object to this ruling. 

On March 4 Yogi publicized in an X post that THORChain aided North Korean money laundering of $605 million while avoiding all anti-money laundering standards. He mentioned that other decentralized networks already prevent suspicious wallets without breaking decentralization principles yet THORChain chooses to do nothing despite available transaction monitoring tools.

After the Bybit hack happened on February 26 Elliptic discovered 11,084 wallet addresses that matched with the hacker’s network. The company expects this number to grow as the investigation continues. During his March 4 statement Bybit CEO Ben Zhou revealed that $280 million of the stolen cryptocurrency money vanished from possible tracking.

Crypto industry experts challenge current regulatory requirements against decentralized trading methods to meet new official checks of money laundering protocols.