Hackers who exploited the now-bankrupt FTX exchange last week made a tidy fortune that has propelled them to a whale status.
Elliptic, a blockchain intelligence company, reported that just a day after the embattled FTX exchange filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, its wallets were drained for more than $663 million in various crypto assets.
FTX itself is believed to have moved $186 million worth of more than a hundred different tokens into secure storage, while Elliptic suspects $477 million was taken.
As reported on Nov. 15, the attacker was still draining wallets four days later.
Blockchain security firm Beosin reports that the attacker has conducted multiple swaps and cross-chain transactions over the past day and currently holds approximately $338 million in cryptocurrencies.
The Wallet address indicates 228,523 ETH, worth around $288.8 million at current market prices.
By holding this amount of ETH, the "FTX Accounts Drainer" account becomes the 35th largest Ethereum holder.
According to CoinCarp's Ethereum rich list, Beacon Chain deposits contain around 15 million ETH. A majority of the top 20 are crypto exchanges, layer-2 protocols, and Decentralized Finance (DeFi) bridges.
Over 27.7% of all ETH is held by the top 20 ETH wallets, and a third of all ETH is held by the top 50 ETH wallets.
Many speculated that the exploits could have been carried out by insiders on both FTX and FTX.US. Hugh Brooks, director of security operations at Certik, suggested as much. The compromised private key cannot prevent an insider from moving funds from these wallets, he said in a report on Nov. 15.
The potential offloading of Ether's 35th-largest holder has not had any impact on its price.According to CoinGecko, ETH was trading flat on the day at $1,260 at the time of writing. Since the FTX debacle began, the asset has lost approximately 23%.
