What happens if the FTX hacker cannot withdraw $270M in ETH without being tracked? The hacker began exchanging millions of dollars in ETH to Ren Bitcoin (renBTC), then dumps it on an illiquid day (Sunday). Ren Protocol is a DeFi interoperability project backed by SBF’s Alameda Research.
The FTX Accounts Drainer address wraps ETH to renBTC and exchanges it for WBTC, most likely because BTC is more decentralized and less likely to be frozen, as well as potentially easier to launder.
RenBTC, Ren Protocol’s tokenized bitcoin product, is the leading BTC asset in the DeFi ecosystem. Essentially, a user can send bitcoins to the RenVM, which then creates renBTC that represents the original bitcoins. RenVM stores the original funds, allowing the process to be reversed when the user wishes to retrieve their bitcoins.
Also Read: DeFi Protocol Ren Moves on from Alameda
According to data cited by security firm PeckShield, the hacker transferred over 5,000 ETH and another 35,000 ETH to a new wallet in three separate transactions.
Following that, the new wallet began converting those ETH to renBTC via the decentralized exchange aggregator 1inch.
The Ren virtual machine accepts tokens on one chain and creates new tokens representing the original ones on another chain through its RenBridge.
FTX Accounts Drainer currently holds 185,735.28 ETH and has transferred 50k ETH to the new wallet 0x866E, which then swapped these ETH for 3,517 renBTC and bridged out.
The FTX Accounts Drainer wallet is still dumping ETH and renBTC from a new wallet 0x8059.
