The Shadowy Crypto Services Helping the Binance Hackers Launder Stolen Billions

A facts-only brief, written by a local AI model from this article in The Wall Street Journal, November 7, 2026. It may contain mistakes, and it is not the article: the full story is at wsj.com.

Hackers stole over $6 billion from cryptocurrency exchange Binance last week, initiating a massive laundering operation that split the funds across more than 10,000 wallets, according to blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis. Despite an FBI request to halt activity, decentralized platforms THORChain and Wasabi Wallet continued processing transactions linked to the heist. THORChain processed over $46 million in stolen funds within 72 hours, generating more than $200,000 in fees for its infrastructure operators. Meanwhile, nearly $4 million was mixed through Wasabi Wallet, a service that masks the source of bitcoin transfers.

Background

• The FBI attributed the hack to North Korea, a claim the North Korean government has denied.
• THORChain developers argue their protocol cannot censor transactions, while critics contend the platform is highly centralized and profits from illicit activity.
• Stablecoin issuers Tether and Circle froze approximately half of the stolen funds shortly after the breach, leaving close to $3 billion still under hacker control.
• A single coordinator, identified by the pseudonym Kruw, handles over 99% of Wasabi Wallet transactions and has stated he does not heed regulatory demands.

Read the full article at wsj.com

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