Comment on Bybit Hack by Adam Back

Adam Back, cypherpunk, Satoshi Nakamoto ally, and Blockstream CEO, has commented on the Bybit exchange hack where hackers drained an impressive $1.4 billion of Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency.

Analysts suspect that the Lazarus Group, a notorious hacker group from North Korea, was behind the attack.

Adam Back Criticizes Ethereum During Bybit Hack

Prominent cypherpunk and Bitcoiner, Adam Back, tweeted that with the recent EVM contract hack, “Bitcoin dominance ratchets higher.”

He quoted an earlier post of his, asserting that Ethereum and its EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) technology are “complex, fragile, blind-signed, un-securable”. Back claimed that hackers have drained $billions annually for years.

> #bitcoin dominance ratchets higher. Another day, another EVM contract hack. link
> — Adam Back (@adam3us) February 22, 2025

Former Blockstream CSO and current JAN3 CEO, Samson Mow, suggested a rollback of the Ethereum chain to prevent North Korean hackers from selling the $1.4 billion ETH for funding nuclear programs. He reminded the community of the 2016 hard fork after the DAO hack, which resulted in Ethereum (ETH) and Ethereum Classic (ETC).

Other major exchanges like Binance, Bitget, and MEXC have provided liquidity support to Bybit, about 114,500 ETH and 12,652 stETH. Binance CEO Richart Teng and former CEO CZ showed support for Bybit on social media.

Laundering Stolen Ethereum to Bitcoin

Bybit CEO Ben Zhou reported that the hackers began laundering the stolen Ethereum by converting it to Bitcoin via Chainflip. He urged the community to help block these transactions as potential recovery strategies.

> We are starting to see some funds being moved to link as a bridge to convert to BTC: bc1qlu4a33zjspefa3tnq566xszcr0fvwz05ewhqfq
>
> with below transactions:
> 0x4f5f7ba657bf518d383828183087978b452b99da6cde0c9b94739b8d72a8c5ef…
> — Ben Zhou (@benbybit) February 22, 2025

The analytics account @lookonchain suggested that the Bybit hack might be related to an earlier Phemex exchange exploit totaling $69 million at the end of January.