Wormhole Hacker Shifts $46M, Possibly For ETH Arbitrage

The Wormhole exploiter seems to be looking for arbitrage chances with

Ethereum-pegged assets.

Data from blockchain security firm PeckShield has revealed that the hacker responsible for the Wormhole attack, one of the largest crypto exploits of 2022, has moved another $46 million worth of stolen funds. The attack, which occurred in February of 2022, resulted in the theft of approximately $321 million worth of Wrapped ETH (wETH).

The hacker's associated wallet has become active once again, transferring 24,400 Lido Finance-wrapped Ethereum staking tokens (wstETH) worth approximately $41.4 million, as well as 3,000 Rocket Pool Ethereum staking tokens (rETH) worth around $5 million, to MakerDAO.

It appears that the hacker is seeking yield or arbitrage opportunities, as the assets were exchanged for 16.6 million DAI. The MakerDAO stablecoin was then used to purchase 9,750 ETH priced at around $1,537, and 1,000 stETH, which were then wrapped back into 9,700 wstETH.

On February 10th, an on-chain sleuth noticed that the hacker was taking advantage of the dip in Ethereum prices. Despite the price of Ethereum dropping below the levels seen earlier in the day, Ethereum was still trading 2.6% lower at $1,505 according to CoinGecko.

The transfers caused stETH prices to depeg from Ethereum and climb to as high as $1,570. At the time of writing, stETH was trading 2.4% higher than ETH at $1,541. Additionally, wstETH had also depegged and had risen to $1,676, 11.3% higher than the underlying asset.

The recent transfer of funds comes only a few weeks after a hacker moved $155 million worth of Ethereum to a decentralized exchange on January 24th. 95,630 ETH was sent to OpenOcean DEX and then quickly converted into ETH-pegged assets, such as Lido's stETH and wstETH. 

This is yet another example of the growing trend of cryptocurrency users turning to decentralized exchanges to protect their assets.