what happen?
Following an investigation by on-chain detective ZachXBT, four stablecoin issuers Paxos, Tether, Techteryx, and Circle teamed up to freeze two wallet addresses related to the North Korean hacker group Lazarus Group, totaling nearly $5 million in frozen funds.
Meanwhile, ZachXBT criticized USDC issuer Circle, accusing it of taking 4.5 months longer than other issuers to freeze the funds.
North Korean hacker group steals more than $200 million in assets
Well-known on-chain detective ZachXBT recently pointed out that the Lazarus Group-related wallet addresses jointly frozen by four stablecoin issuers contained stablecoin assets totaling US$4.98 million. In addition, multiple exchanges also froze approximately US$1.65 million in funds, bringing the total frozen amount to US$6.98 million.
According to foreign media "The Block", ZachXBT discovered in its initial investigation that the North Korean hacker group Lazarus Group had stolen more than $200 million in cryptocurrency through 25 different blockchain attacks in three years and successfully Launder these funds into fiat currency.
The investigation received assistance from employees from Metamask, Binance, TRM Labs and other companies, and prompted major stablecoin issuers to freeze stablecoin assets in Lazarus Group-related wallets. However, the two wallets also contain $720,000 worth of the DAI stablecoin and approximately $313,000 in Ethereum, which have not yet been frozen.
ZachXBT criticizes Circle for delaying freeze
Although four stablecoin issuers have blocked relevant wallet addresses, ZachXBT still criticized Circle's slow action in a post.
ZachXBT stated that Circle, as a USDC issuer, still delayed 4.5 months before freezing addresses related to Lazarus Group after other issuers had already taken action. ZachXBT severely criticized Circle’s CEO for not caring about the overall ecosystem and only extracting benefits from it.
"After every DeFi (decentralized finance) attack or hacking incident, you never blocked the address with enough time, but continued to profit from the transaction." ZachXBT wrote in the post.
Source: The Block, CryptoBriefing, DailyCoin
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