Lazarus Group Siphons $30M Through Hyperliquid Ahead of US Regulatory Push
The Lazarus Group, a North Korean hacking collective sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), has moved over $30 million through Hyperliquid's HyperUnit service as of August 31.
This disclosure comes as policymakers and Kraken's parent company, Payward, pursue a regulated pathway for Hyperliquid to enter American markets.
The OFAC-sanctioned wallets were previously identified by researcher ZachXBT in 2024 as linked to $61 million in stolen funds. The same wallet cluster was found to have funneled Bitcoin into Hyperliquid before converting it into Ethereum and Solana, then bridging across Tron, Solana, and Ethereum networks.
The converted assets were then distributed to several centralized exchanges, including KuCoin, LBank, Kraken, and unlabeled Tron-based services. This method of distributing funds across multiple platforms is a common way for illicit proceeds to be obscured.