The hacker behind the $25 million exploit of quantitative trading firm Kronos Research in mid-November 2023 started moving funds nearly six months after the exploit.

The hacker wallet first transferred 1,314 Ether worth $4 million to a new address, starting with 0x8F5e4 and later transferred all the ETH to another address starting with 0x164A24b.

Tornado Cash is an open-source cryptocurrency mixer that operates on networks compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine. The mixing services obscure the path of the crypto transactions and make it extremely difficult to trace the source of the funds.

Although created as a privacy tool, hackers often use mixing services to launder stolen funds via decentralized exchange platforms.

The significant usage of Tornado Cash for transferring illicit funds prompted the United States government to impose sanctions on its use in August 2022. Subsequently, its founders were charged with money laundering and sanctions violations in 2023.

While opinions within the crypto community vary regarding adopting privacy tools, there is a consensus against state persecution of developers for creating an application.

The crypto analytics firm PeckShield raised an alert regarding the transfer of funds on X. It cautioned that the transfer to Tornado Cash suggests that the hacker is attempting to launder the stolen funds.

Over the years, exploiters have chosen crypto-mixing services over centralized exchanges, as once they are identified, exchanges block addresses.

Kronos Capital was exploited in November 2023 after the exploiters managed to gain access to the firm’s application programming interface keys. The firm first denied any loss of funds during its early announcement.

Later, on-chain investigator ZachXBT revealed that roughly 12,800 ETH worth $25 million was stolen and transferred into six unique crypto wallet addresses. Kronos Capital halted its trading services to investigate the loss.

United States-based cryptocurrency exchange Gemini, founded by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, has announced plans to expand into the Asia-Pacific region.

In a June 19 blog post, Gemini said it planned to increase the number of staff at the firm’s Singapore office as well as establish an engineering division in India. The crypto exchange hinted at larger plans for expanding into the region in the next 12 months.

The expansion plans come amid Gemini facing a lawsuit filed in January by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over Gemini Earn. The exchange’s product — offered in partnership with Genesis — allowed users to lend crypto assets to Genesis, which the SEC alleges violated U.S. securities laws.

Gemini seemed to be exploring different markets amid the crackdown on many crypto firms in the United States. In April, the exchange took the first steps to become a restricted dealer registered with Canada’s Ontario Securities Commission, one of the country’s major financial regulators. In May, the Winklevoss twins announced they had chosen Ireland as a base to grow the firm’s services across Europe.

Aptos Foundation announced  that it had rewarded its early network participants with free APT tokens. 

The foundation shared that it had allocated an estimated 20 million APT tokens, representing 2% of its initial total supply of 1 billion APT, to about 110,235 eligible participants. The airdropped tokens had an estimated value of about $200–$260 million USD based on the token’s market price at the time the drop took place.

According to the blockchain company, eligibility for the airdropped tokens was based on two categories: Users who completed an application for an Aptos Incentivized Testnet and users who minted “an APTOS: ZERO testnet nonfungible token, or NFT.Only the original minters of these NFTs were eligible, not the current or secondary owners of the NFTs.

The company shared that Aptos tokens could only be claimed via the official Aptos Community page with additional information provided in the eligibility email sent out by the company. They cautioned users to exercise extreme caution and only trust official sources and channels to avoid being defrauded.

Aptos Foundation’s first airdrop to its community members comes at a time when the project has been under much scrutiny by members of the crypto community on Twitter.