Coinbase Executive Suggests Major Bitcoin Whale May Have Been Hacked

Conor Grogan, a Coinbase executive, proposed that a significant whale address containing roughly $8 billion worth of Bitcoin might have been compromised.

Grogan noted that the activity surrounding this address indicates the possibility that its private keys could be in the possession of malicious actors. If verified, this situation could mark one of the largest digital thefts in cryptocurrency history.

He provided further evidence for his assertion: “14 hours ago, a low-amount test transaction was performed on the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) network from an address linked to the BTC whale cluster. This could have been an attempt to verify the validity of the private key.” He observed that all BTC assets began moving approximately 1 hour after this transaction.

Grogan highlighted the significance of this test operation on the BCH network since BCH is not extensively monitored by whale tracking systems, suggesting that the address owner might have tested the private key to maintain anonymity.

Additionally, he pointed out that other BCH addresses associated with the same wallets remain inactive, raising further suspicions: “If someone had accessed their wallets, why have they not also transferred their remaining BCH balances?”

He assessed the likelihood of this address belonging to a prominent exchange as weak. The existence of BCH transactions, along with indications that BTC transfers were performed manually, suggests that these actions were executed by an individual rather than an exchange system.

“If this is indeed a hack, it could represent the largest digital theft in human history,” he stated.

Nonetheless, Grogan cautioned that his data remains inconclusive, and all observations are speculative at this phase.

This is not investment advice.