Bybit CEO Ben Zhou Declares War on Lazarus Group: Unveils $140M Hack Bounty

Key Notes

• The bounty program offers 29% of stolen funds as rewards, with 10% distributed between contributors who trace funds and entities that freeze assets.
• Bybit has purchased 212,100 ETH worth $574M through OTC platforms in the past three days to repay borrowed funds following the hack.
• The initiative aims to unite the Web3 ecosystem against North Korean hackers who have stolen over $3.4B in the past two years according to Chainalysis.

Bybit, a prominent cryptocurrency exchange that survived one of the largest cryptocurrency hacks of over $1.4 billion, has unveiled a counter plan to eliminate the North Korea-backed Lazarus Group and bad actors abetting the hackers in money laundering. Earlier on Tuesday, February 25, Ben Zhou, co-founder and CEO of Bybit, announced the launch of the first bounty site that shows full transparency on the money laundering activities of the sanctioned Lazarus Group dubbed Lazarusbounty.com.

Join us on war against Lazarus – https://t.co/6DnaH1WTId
Industry first bounty site that shows aggregated full transparency on the sanctioned Lazarus money laundering activities. V1 includes:
– Becoming a bounty hunter by connecting your wallet and help tracing the fund, when…

— Ben Zhou (@benbybit) February 25, 2025

The Bybit-backed hack bounty will entail a $140 million reward, which represents 29 percent of all the stolen funds. In order to encourage more participants, the 10 percent reward will be distributed equally between the contributors who helped trace the stolen funds and the entity that facilitates a successful freezing of the stolen funds.

As of this writing, a total of $4.2 million had been awarded to five bounty hunters including Mantle network, ZachXBT, Zeroshadow, and Binance exchange. However, a total of $94.1 million has been successfully laundered by the Lazarus Group through Belize-based eXch protocol in the past three days.

The eXch cryptocurrency exchange facilitated money laundering largely since it does not require any documents from the users to enable the KYC feature.

How to Participate in Bybit Hack Bounty and What to Expect Next

In order to participate in the hack bounty program, interested parties will have to connect their wallet to help in tracing the funds. Once a bounty is submitted and successfully helps in freezing the stolen funds, the contributor will receive an upfront of 5 percent.

Meanwhile, Bybit announced that a live update on the latest wallet with the latest balance to help claim a wallet and own part of the journey for a specific time will be added in the near future.

Bybit Purchases $574M ETH Following Hack

According to on-chain data analysis, Bybit has purchased over 212.1k Ethereum (ETH), worth more than $574 million through OTC platforms in the past three days. As a result, the cryptocurrency exchange has managed to return a significant amount of the borrowed funds including to Bitget.

It seems that #Bybit bought another 36,893 $ETH ($87.5M) through #OTC 3 hours ago.#Bybit has bought a total of 212,101 $ETH($574M) through #OTC in the past 3 days.https://t.co/tLKDNz9XJn pic.twitter.com/qgTRWtLaz1

— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) February 25, 2025

Meanwhile, after one and a half months of closing its services in India, Bybit informed its customers in the country that it has resumed operations after receiving the necessary approval from the authorities.

The launch of the hack bounty program will help bring together a robust force for the entire Web3 ecosystem to fight the North Korea-affiliated hackers, who have now stolen more than $3.4 billion in the past two years according to Chainalysis.

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