Hacker Who Stole $600 Million from FTX Begins Exchanging Ether to renBTC

The hacker behind the $600 million hack of FTX has begun exchanging Ether to Ren Bitcoin (renBTC), a token that represents bitcoin on other blockchains.

The attacker transferred millions of dollars in Ethereum to an account called FTX account drainer and began selling off all of the stolen funds. And the funds stolen from FTX have been converted to ether continuously over the past week, making the attacker one of the largest holders of that token.

Analysis of the new wallet chain shows that the hacker subsequently began converting ethers into renBTC using the decentralised exchange aggregator 1inch. In the first of the transactions, 4,000 ethers were converted into wrapped bitcoin (wBTC), another token representing bitcoin, and then into renBTC.

It is interesting that the hacker preferred renBTC. In 2021, Alameda Research, a trading arm owned by Sam Bankman-Fried, announced that the Ren development team was "joining" Alameda and would work to expand the use of Ren across multiple blockchains.

A study from blockchain analytics company Elliptic reports that the Ren bridge has previously been used to launder at least $540 million in stolen funds - as it can ensure user privacy.

Amid the actions of an attacker who allegedly emptied FTX wallets, dumped a significant portion of accumulated ETH and exchanged it for bitcoin Ethereum fell more than 7% in a day.