U.S. Law Enforcement Seizes $31M in Crypto Tied to Uranium Finance Hack

U.S. authorities have seized about $31 million in crypto tied to the 2021 hack of Uranium Finance, in accordance to a Monday X submit from the Southern District of New York (SDNY).

According to the submit, the seizure was the results of a joint effort between SDNY and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in San Diego. A spokesperson for SDNY didn’t return CoinDesk’s request for remark earlier than press time, and no additional particulars in regards to the seizure or any associated investigation had been instantly obtainable.

Uranium Finance was primarily a clone of automated market maker (AMM) Uniswap deployed on Binance’s BNB chain (then known as Binance Smart Chain). In April 2021, a hacker exploited a bug in Uranium’s pair contracts to steal $50 million in numerous tokens. At the time of the incident, the Uranium Finance hack was one of many largest financial exploits in decentralized finance (DeFi) historical past.

Read extra: Binance Chain DeFi Exchange Uranium Finance Loses $50M in Exploit

After the exploit, the hacker tried to launder a portion of the funds in quite a lot of methods, together with utilizing crypto mixer Tornado Cash, depositing small quantities of crypto into centralized exchanges, and, in accordance to blockchain sleuth ZachXBT, maybe via buying uncommon and extremely invaluable Magic: The Gathering buying and selling playing cards.

Uranium Finance shuttered after the hack, leaving victims with out solutions or monetary restitution. The partial restoration, which comes almost 4 years after the preliminary assault, affords the primary glimmer of hope for victims to see a few of their cash returned.