The US government has reportedly retrieved more than $19 million from a what appeared to be a hack this past week, according to insights shared by Arkham.
The US government-linked digital wallet appears to have recovered nearly 90% of the lost assets within 24 hours of the alleged security breach.
𝗨𝗣𝗗𝗔𝗧𝗘: $𝟭𝟵𝗠 𝗨𝗦 𝗚𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗳𝘂𝗻𝗱𝘀 𝗿𝗲𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗻𝗲𝗱
The US Government’s address has just received $19.3M back following yesterday’s reported hack, less than 24 hours after the initial address breach.
88% of the compromised USD value has now been… https://t.co/F8q6iikBrT pic.twitter.com/Vo7I7ZH9K1
— Arkham (@arkham) October 25, 2024
The crypto wallet in question is said to have been linked to the United States government and had lost more than $20 million in stablecoins as well as Ethereum (ETH) (as widely reported on October 24, 2024).
This particular crypto wallet, which on-chain analytics indicate is associated with the American government, was able to recover around $19.3 million from the $20 million (alleged) hack.
The recovery came within a day of the security breach, according to blockchain analytics company Arkham.
The funds reportedly included $14 million worth of AUSDC stablecoin along with about $5.4 million worth of Circle’s stablecoin USDC as well as $1.1 million in Tether’s USDT and $500,000 worth of ETH tokens.
While it is not certain right now just why the funds have been transferred Arkham said that the transactions indicated abusive / suspicious activities.
The bad actor(s) transferred the assets to non-custodial apps in what seemed to be an effort to misappropriate the pilfered digital currencies.
The crypto-assets had not actually been transferred in more than 8 months prior to the October 24 incident.
It’s worth noting that the crypto-assets pilfered this past Thursday had been linked to alleged government seizures that were said to be associated with the 2016 Bitfinex hack, where the digital assets platform saw almost 120,000 Bitcoins stolen in a major security issue.
During the past few years, governments and other major organizations have increasingly started to focus on the Bitcoin and crypto-assets sector. This area of digital finance has grown rapidly in the last decade and has seen a rise in illicit activities as well. Due to concerns related to financial crime and other forms of harmful activities, regulators have been cracking down on the crypto sector but scams and fraudulent activities continue to rise.