Kraken Restricts Accounts After Suspected $133M Crypto Theft

A suspected cryptocurrency theft involving an unidentified European entity has grown to more than $133 million, as reported by Bitcoinist, citing blockchain investigator ZachXBT, who identified additional withdrawals from centralized exchanges.

His first alert on November 2 put the suspected losses above $106 million. The update of November 3 adds another $27 million, with some transactions occurring after the initial disclosure. ZachXBT suggested that a major financial institution in Western Europe may have been compromised and questioned whether the incident was being concealed. Neither the victim's identity nor the cover-up allegation has been independently verified.

How exchanges responded

Kraken said it had restricted accounts linked to the theft and was cooperating with law enforcement. It stressed that the incident did not originate on its platform and that its security systems and customer accounts were not compromised. Crypto.com also confirmed it had blocked funds tied to the incident from moving through its platform, while OKX said it was looking into the matter.

Bitquery reported that the funds were withdrawn via accounts at Kraken, Crypto.com and OKX, and that about $62.98 million in stablecoins was converted into 27,553 ETH within roughly four hours. According to ZachXBT, the attacker used Ethereum, instant exchanges and cross-chain bridges, and converted some assets into Monero (XMR).

As of 13:47 UTC on November 2, Bitquery estimated that about $78.3 million remained in wallets tied to the attacker, while $30.5 million had left the tracked addresses. Only around $3.74 million sat in USDC that Circle could potentially freeze, and Tether had frozen about $1.1 million in USDT. ZachXBT argued that delayed disclosure let over $30 million be laundered.

The investigation is ongoing. For anyone doing USDT exchange, the case shows how much depends on fast coordination between exchanges, stablecoin issuers and law enforcement.