"Lazarus Group's $1.4B Heist: eXch Denies Money Laundering Role"

The Lazarus Group, a notorious cybercrime syndicate linked to North Korea, has been under increased scrutiny following allegations of its involvement in both the historic $1.4 billion Bybit hack and a series of meme coin scams on the Solana blockchain. Onchain investigators and blockchain security firms have identified connections between wallets used in the Bybit exploit and fraudulent activities on Solana’s Pump.fun platform.

Crypto exchange eXch has firmly denied allegations of laundering money for North Korea’s notorious Lazarus Group following the historic $1.4 billion Bybit hack on Feb. 21. The exchange issued a statement on the Bitcointalk forum on Feb. 23, asserting that it had no involvement in facilitating illicit transactions for the cybercriminal syndicate linked to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).

In its statement, the eXch team declared, “We are not laundering money for Lazarus/DPRK,” emphasizing that all funds held on the exchange remained secure and that its operations had not been affected by the Bybit hack. The exchange also criticized those accusing it of illicit activity, branding such claims as unfounded fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD).

While maintaining its innocence, eXch did acknowledge that a small fraction of the stolen funds had passed through its platform. The exchange clarified that it had processed an “insignificant portion of funds” from the Bybit hack, which had entered its address 0xf1da173228fcf015f43f3ea15abbb51f0d8f1123. eXch insisted that this was an isolated incident and that the fees collected from these transactions would be donated for the public good.

The rebuttal from eXch follows mounting scrutiny from on-chain analysts and security firms that have accused the platform of playing a more substantial role in laundering funds stolen from Bybit. On Feb. 22, blockchain investigator ZachXBT posted to his Telegram investigations group, alleging that eXch had laundered $35 million of the stolen funds. He also pointed out that the exchange had mistakenly sent 34 Ether (ETH), worth approximately $96,000, to a hot wallet belonging to another exchange. His findings have been echoed by blockchain security firm SlowMist, which claimed