ByBit stolen funds are untraceable

ByBit crypto currency exchange has got green flag to trace the stolen $1.5B funds by North Korean hackers. However, most the funds are already untraceable. 

Permission to trace arrives after the money’s gone, every time, and everyone treats that as the normal order of events. The part we still cant work out is who keeps standing on the other side of those swaps knowing exactly what they are buying. Court orders help, but 90% already untraceable is the loudest possible advertorial for boring custody work. 

The biggest lesson is that blockchain transparency has limits once stolen funds move through enough obfuscation layers. 

A court order is a paper trail. Laundering through mixers and cross-chain swaps happens in hours. By the time legal backing arrives, the money’s already three chains away. Prevention at the protocol level matters more than chasing funds after they’re gone. Once a key is compromised, tracing becomes just accounting for the loss. 

90% of the stolen funds are already untraceable. #northkorea https://t.co/MlMGggeciO

— Authority Capital (@emphatic) August 8, 2026

This has been a rough week for the compliance desk but at least the feds are finally learning how to read an on-chain graph. guess the other 10% is just sitting in some mixer chilling forever.