Kelp DAO Hacker Transfers Over 106K ETH in 20 Hours, Converts 34.5K ETH to BTC via THORChain

Gate News message, April 22 — The suspected Kelp DAO hacker transferred 106,466 ETH to external wallets over the past 20 hours, according to on-chain data from Arkham. The attacker dispersed the funds across multiple addresses, a common money-laundering technique used to obscure transaction trails.

On April 18, Kelp DAO suffered a cross-chain bridge exploit that resulted in the theft of 116,500 rsETH (approximately $292 million). The attacker deposited 89,567 rsETH as collateral on lending protocol Aave and borrowed $190 million in ETH and related assets. The Arbitrum Foundation responded by freezing 30,766 ETH, but the hacker continues to move non-frozen funds.

According to on-chain analyst Amber CN, the attacker has now converted 34,500 ETH (approximately $80 million) to Bitcoin through decentralized exchange THORChain. The activity caused THORChain's 24-hour platform fee revenue to surge to $420,000, up from an average daily volume of approximately $20 million.