Hacker Steals $600 Million in Crypto, Gets Scared and Returns It – Futurism

The Poly Network hacker speaks out.Red-Handed

On Tuesday, a cryptocurrency brokerage called The Poly Network revealed that it had been hacked by someone who made off with over $600 million thats more than a half of a BILLION dollars in the form of hundreds of cryptocurrencies.

But now the hacker is in the process of returning the stolen crypto, according to The Verge. The Poly Network seems to have gotten through to whomever it was with a strongly-worded tweet, warning that they would be pursued by law enforcement and inviting them to work out a solution to rectify things for their tens of thousands of victims.

As of Wednesday morning, the hacker has returned about $258 million of the crypto that they had stolen, CNBC reports.

I think this demonstrates that even if you can steal cryptoassets, laundering them and cashing out is extremely difficult, due to the transparency of the blockchain and the use of blockchain analytics, blockchain analytics firm Elliptics chief scientist Tom Robinson told CNBC.

In this case, the hacker concluded that the safest option was just to return the stolen assets, he added.

As The Verge noticed, the hacker seemed to be returning less valuable cryptocurrencies first they embedded a message in one transaction that simply said dumping shitcoins first.

Later on Wednesday morning, Robinson tweeted a Q&A-style post from the hacker that answered the question on everyones minds: Why steal $600 million? Okay, maybe the real answer is obvious because its a crapton of money.

But the hacker did post some white hat logic, perhaps as a form of damage control, saying that they were merely hacking for fun 🙂 and trying to save the world.

Were not exactly sure how that one works, but for now, the drama in crypto-world continues.

READ MORE: A hacker stole over $600 million of crypto coins now they might be giving it back [The Verge]

More on crypto theft: Hackers Are Already Stealing NFTs

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Hacker Steals $600 Million in Crypto, Gets Scared and Returns It - Futurism