The Ronin hacker is on the move.
At the time of writing, on-chain data shows he, she, or they was busy transferring over 1,400 Ether to Tornado Cash in 100 ETH increments.
Tornado Cash is the privacy-based protocol that obfuscates transactions by ‘mixing’ Eth, making it impossible to trace.
https://etherscan.io/address/0xbc25d57412a04956cdd95af07825c5c1f34d29eb
The $600 million hack to the Ronin bridge was one of the most lucrative exploits in DeFi history. As per our (spoof!) article, the post-hoc challenge is to successfully launder the funds while evading law enforcement in whichever jurisdiction they’re operating in.
Far from concerns that the hacker could move markets by offloading 173k ETH, some have suggested the exploit could prove bullish for the market.
Plus, (see InvestAnswers’ thesis during Friday’s Banter show) Sky Mavis, the company behind the Ronin blockchain and Axie Infinity, may be forced to buy ETH back to cover its losses.
Banter’s take
So far, it seems like Tornado Cash is proving its efficacy. It’s a divisive protocol, but guess what: it doesn’t care whether you approve of it or not.
That said, we wouldn’t envy this hacker’s predicament: with a blacklisted wallet, the difficulty of successfully laundering all this money – with or without Tornado Cash – requires immense patience and an almost impossibly long time horizon.
