Bitget Hackers Shift $4M in Stolen Funds Into Zcash Privacy Pool

Wallets associated with the $387.5 million Bitget hack transferred roughly $3.9 million worth of zcash (ZEC) into Zcash’s private payment system Wednesday, making the stolen assets more difficult to track as the exchange works to recover the funds.

The transfers involved 2,746 ZEC entering Ironwood, Zcash’s latest shielded pool, across three transactions between 08:15 and 08:46 UTC, according to CoinDesk’s examination of blockchain records.

Pseudonymous blockchain investigator ZachXBT first identified the transactions earlier Wednesday. He said the funds passed through two intermediary addresses that had been funded by a wallet Bitget previously identified as controlled by the attacker. That wallet received nearly 18,917 ZEC during the Sept. 24 breach.

Zcash supports both transparent and shielded transactions. While investigators can observe the amount deposited into Ironwood, transactions conducted within the shielded pool conceal the identities of the sender and recipient as well as the amount transferred.

If the funds are subsequently withdrawn to a transparent address, the amount leaving the shielded pool becomes publicly visible again. Investigators can examine deposit and withdrawal points using factors such as timing, amounts and other metadata, but Zcash does not provide a direct transaction history connecting the two sides.

The three deposits account for roughly 15% of the stolen ZEC.

Other funds from the hack have also been transferred between blockchains through swap services. CoinDesk previously traced approximately $6.3 million in ether-to-bitcoin conversions through THORChain from an attacker-linked wallet. Those transactions left the incoming ether and outgoing bitcoin publicly visible on their respective blockchains.