Greece Nabs First Crypto Haul Following Bybit’s $1.5B Hack – Inside the Takedown

Greek authorities just pulled off their maiden crypto seizure—and it’s tied to one of the biggest exchange heists in history. Here’s how the $1.5 billion Bybit hack unraveled.

### From Digital Heist to Real-World Bust

When Bybit got drained, the thieves probably didn’t expect Interpol knocking. Greece’s cybercrime unit just turned their digital loot into a physical liability.

### The Paper Trail (Or Lack Thereof)

No anonymous wallets saved them this time. Forensic chain analysis traced the funds—proving even ‘privacy coins’ leave crumbs when you move nine figures.

### Wall Street’s Ironic Takeaway

Meanwhile, traditional finance is still ‘assessing risks’—while crypto’s transparent ledger does their compliance work for them. The future’s unevenly distributed.

Blockchain Analysis Enables International Law Enforcement Breakthrough

Greece’s success stemmed from strategic preparation, with the Hellenic Authority investing in Chainalysis Reactor capabilities through its regional partner, Performance Technologies, in 2023.

The blockchain analysis revealed that North Korean hackers immediately laundered the stolen ethereum through intricate transaction webs designed to obscure the money trail.

Chainalysis confirmed the initial compromise occurred via social engineering, with attackers executing phishing attacks against cold wallet signers to manipulate multi-signature implementations.

Bybit CEO Zhou described the devastating moment he learned of the breach, initially believing 30,000worth $82 million was affected before discovering all 401,000 ETH ($1.4 billion) had vanished.

The exchange processed 350,000 withdrawal requests within 10 hours and 580,000 by Saturday, maintaining operations to preserve customer confidence.

Security analysts confirmed the Lazarus Group moved funds rapidly through decentralized exchanges, mixers, and cross-chain bridges to evade tracking.

BYBIT HACKER LAUNDERING FUNDS

The Bybit Hacker is making 2-3 transactions per minute, and stops every 45 minutes for a 15 minute break. They MOVE ETH from one address at a time, before moving onto the next one.

Did Lazarus get an intern to wash their funds manually? pic.twitter.com/XCS16hMC3i

The cybercriminals converted 86.29% of stolen funds into 12,836 Bitcoin distributed across 9,117 wallets, primarily using Wasabi, CryptoMixer, Railgun, and Tornado Cash for obfuscation.

Global Crackdown Targets Crypto Laundering Infrastructure

As Greece took a step, Germany has taken its own significant action, seizing €34 million ($38 million) in crypto from the eXch platform on May 8 as part of ongoing investigations into the Bybit hack money laundering.

The seizure marked the third-largest crypto confiscation in the history of the German Federal Criminal Police Office, effectively shutting down the privacy-centric swapping service.

German authorities dismantled eXch after determining that the platform had laundered over €1.75 billion ($1.9 billion) in cryptocurrency, with a significant portion suspected to have originated from criminal activities.

The investigation revealed eXch ignored repeated warnings, refused to block malicious addresses, and failed to comply with regulatory freeze orders.

ZachXBT confirmed eXch processed funds from multiple high-profile incidents, including multisig wallet exploits, the $243 million Genesis creditor heist, and numerous phishing operations.

The platform marketed itself as privacy-centric, offering cross-blockchain exchanges without identity verification or anti-money laundering compliance.

Despite claiming a shutdown in April, eXch continued operations through backend APIs while websites went offline.

TRM Labs revealed that the platform never truly ceased functioning, allowing criminal groups, including Lazarus, to continue laundering activities through signature mixing pools that obscured the origins of the funds.

Despite shutdown claims, crypto mixer eXch still launders illicit funds via active API, linked to Bybit hack and CSAM funding, warns @trmlabs.#CryptoCrime #CryptoMixerhttps://t.co/DQBOEYPnR3

As it stands now, recovery efforts united 12 organizations, including Mantle, Paraswap, and blockchain investigators, earning bounty hunters $2.2 million USDT for assistance.

Despite these efforts, organized crime remains a significant threat to the cryptocurrency industry.

Between June and July, Taiwan’s BitoPro has lost $11.5 million through exposed wallets during system upgrades, and Brazil’s C&M Software attack resulted in $40 million crypto laundering.

Most significantly, Iran’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Nobitex, confirmed a $73 million security breach on June 19, with unauthorized access detected in its hot wallet infrastructure, which subsequently resulted in over $90 million being drained.

Suspected exploit hits GMX — over $42M drained from vaults and bridged from Arbitrum to Ethereum, reports DeBank.#GMXi #Exploit https://t.co/1rKj0uE1br

In fact, just today, the decentralized exchange GMX is believed to have suffered a $42 million exploit, with digital assets reportedly drained from its vaults.

For Bybit, the exchange has launched a bounty program offering 10% rewards on recovered funds, totaling up to $140 million for successful asset retrieval.