Binance and Huobi freeze $1.4m crypto linked to North Korean wallets

The funds are said to be affiliated with the Harmony Horizon bridge hack.

Binance and Huobi have frozen $1.4m worth of cryptocurrency assets linked to North Korean wallets.

The funds reportedly originate from Harmony’s Horizon bridge hack in June 2022 where around $100m in funds were compromised.

The blockchain analytics firm Elliptic said its investigators traced the coins through the Tornado Cash coin mixer, a decentralized cryptocurrency tumbler running on Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible networks.

Elliptic claimed the coins had remained dormant before its investors noticed suspicious activity – funds funnelling through complex chains of transactions to exchanges.

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao took to Twitter to inform its users. “We detected Harmony One hacker fund movement. They previously tried to launder through Binance and we froze his accounts. This time he used Huobi. We assisted Huobi’s team to freeze accounts. Together, 124 BTC have been recovered”, he wrote.

The firm notified both crypto exchanges and reported the “illicit deposits” in which Binance and Huobi suspended accounts and immediately froze funds.

“As an industry, we have the power and responsibility to prevent digital assets [from] becoming a haven for money launderers and sanctions evaders, and ensure that they are a force for good”, said Elliptic CEO Simone Maini.

Looking for your next crypto casino? Check out: Mega Dice or FortuneJack

Written by Isabella Aslam

Reporter

Isabella is an experienced writer in B2B and B2C journalism. Alongside crypto, Isabella writes and discusses the topics of relationships and psychology. Isabella holds a first-class degree in music journalism and often interviews electronic artists and DJs.

Similar News