On-chain detectives warn: $330 million in Bitcoin is suspected to have been stolen and laundered into Monero, and XMR once rose 50%
Bitcoins worth US$330 million were suspected of being stolen and laundered into Monero (XMR) through multiple platforms, triggering a surge in the price of XMR and causing the market to pay attention to privacy coins and security.
(Preliminary summary: The British government "sold Monero" for the first time, and all the XMR of a man selling drugs on the dark web was confiscated)
(Background supplement: Technology" What is RISC-V recommended by Vitalik? Why did CKB-VM choose RISC-V? )
On-chain detective ZachXBT revealed this afternoon that it is suspected to be worth as much as 330 million U.S. dollars (3,520 After the Bitcoins were stolen, they were quickly laundered and converted into the privacy currency Monero (XMR) through multiple platforms.
Nine hours ago a suspicious transfer was made from a potential victim for 3520 BTC ($330.7M)
Theft address
bc1qcrypchnrdx87jnal5e5m849fw460t4gk7vz55gShortly after the funds began to be laundered via 6+ instant exchanges and was swapped for XMR causing the XMR price to spike…
— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) April 28, 2025
Large-scale money laundering operation, Monero skyrocketed
ZachXBT pointed out that this huge amount of funds was dispersed to at least six real-time trading platforms for conversion in a short period of time. This sudden and huge wave of buying even caused the price of Monero to surge by about 50% in a short period of time, attracting market attention. At the time of writing, it fell back to $289.15, still a 26% increase in the past 24 hours.
Remarks: Monero was chosen because of its powerful privacy technology, such as ring signatures, which can effectively obfuscate the source and destination of transactions, making tracking extremely difficult and becoming a preferred tool for illegal funds.
The entire incident highlights the two-sided nature of privacy coins: they protect the privacy of legitimate users, but they also become a hotbed of crime. At the same time, it also challenges the encryption ecosystem: How to effectively combat financial crime while ensuring innovation and user privacy? This will be an important issue that the encryption world will continue to face in the future.
