The hacker who managed to steal hundreds of millions in funds from FTX last week has become one of the largest Ethereum whales in the world. About a day after FTX filed for bankruptcy, the company’s wallets emptied. In total, the hacker now owns 228,523 Ether.
Who is the largest whale?
The ‘richest’ Ethereum holder, according to CoinCarp, is the Beacon Chain smart contract. This is the smart contract you need to send Ethers to to participate in the Proof-of-Stake blockchain as a staker. Incidentally, there is still no date for the release of these funds. Users who have their Ethereum in the Proof-of-Stake contract therefore currently do not know when they will be able to access those funds again.
Furthermore, most of the top 20 whales for Ethereum are mainly crypto exchanges, layer-2 protocols and Decentralized Finance (DeFi) bridges. The top 20 own about 27.7 percent of all Ethers and the top 50 around 33.3 percent. Now those protocols are being closely followed by a hacker who has managed to steal more than $ 288.8 million in Ethers.
Inside job
There are some rumors that the hack was an inside job. This means that someone who was on the payroll at FTX is responsible for the hack. After all, you cannot just move funds on a blockchain. You need the private keys for that. It is unlikely that they could simply be found on FTX’s servers.
Most likely these are cold wallets, which could only be obtained by people with physical access to them. Let us especially hope that the funds return to the rightful owner, because it would not be good for the market if 228,523 Ether disappeared into the hands of a hacker.