The short version
- Credit Mutuel Arkea, a French bank with $235 billion in assets, is the EU institution that lost $133M+ in crypto this week, ZachXBT said on Wednesday; the bank has not commented.
- ZachXBT thinks the hack was covered up and says the delay let more than $30 million be laundered that EU law enforcement could have frozen.
- Next: a statement from the bank or French authorities. We’ll post it on Base Camp on X as soon as it lands.
Credit Mutuel Arkea, a French bank with $235 billion in assets, is the EU institution that lost more than $133 million in a crypto theft this week, onchain investigator ZachXBT said early on Wednesday. The bank hasn’t confirmed it or said anything at all.
This is the theft behind the “whale” that bought $63 million of ETH on Sunday night. On Tuesday we showed that buyer was a thief spending stolen stablecoins. Now there’s a name on the other side of the trade, and a bigger number. So what does ZachXBT say happened, and why does he think it was kept quiet?
WuBlockchain shared the update a few minutes after ZachXBT posted it:
ZachXBT: French Bank Crédit Mutuel Arkéa Allegedly Lost Over $133M in Crypto Theft
On-chain investigator ZachXBT disclosed on November 4 that the financial institution allegedly affected by a crypto theft exceeding $133 million is Crédit Mutuel Arkéa, a French banking group with
What Did ZachXBT Say About Credit Mutuel Arkea?
He says Credit Mutuel Arkea is “allegedly” the victim, the attack ran over several days, and the real loss is probably higher than $133 million once over-the-counter trades are counted. ZachXBT named the bank on his Telegram channel at 02:24 UTC on Wednesday (3:24 a.m. in Paris).
The story grew in three steps. On Monday he flagged an unnamed EU entity that had lost $106 million or more from several crypto exchange accounts on November 1, withdrawn as USDC and USDT. On Tuesday he added $27 million of withdrawals and four more theft addresses, and said part of that money left the exchanges after his first alert. Then came the name.
He hasn’t said how the attackers got into the accounts, and he still says the laundering doesn’t look like North Korea’s Lazarus Group. Credit Mutuel Arkea is a cooperative banking group based in Brittany and owns the online bank Fortuneo. ZachXBT hasn’t said what the French bank’s crypto exchange accounts were used for.
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Was the Hack Covered Up?
That is ZachXBT’s working theory, and nobody has proven it yet. On Tuesday he wrote that a large financial institution in Western Europe had been exploited and “it’s currently being covered up”.
His complaint is about speed. With no proper disclosure, he says, more than $30 million was laundered away that EU law enforcement could have frozen. A hack only gets frozen while the money sits in places that can act on it: stablecoin issuers, exchanges, bridges. Every hour without an alert gives the thief time to swap into coins nobody can block, which is exactly why this one bought ETH so fast.
SIDE TRAIL: Ethereum Whale Who Bought $63M of ETH Was a Thief, ZachXBT Says
EU banks do have to report serious cyber incidents. Under the DORA rules, that report goes to their supervisor, not to the public, so a bank can follow the rules and customers still hear nothing.
Kraken and Crypto.com have both said they restricted accounts or blocked funds tied to the theft, and that their own platforms were not breached.
Where Is the Stolen ETH Now?
Still moving out. We checked the four new theft addresses ZachXBT listed on Tuesday, and all four are empty. The wallet we flagged on Monday for feeding swap services such as Chainflip and SWFT held 2,419 ETH on Tuesday morning and holds 1,028 ETH at the time of writing, according to Blockscout data.
The market barely noticed. The Ethereum price is $2,246 at the time of writing, flat over 24 hours and still between the 200-day moving average at $2,157 and the 50-day at $2,505. The sale pressure from this theft is mostly done; the open question is whether a bank confirms it lost nine figures in crypto.
TRAIL MAP: Can Crypto Be Frozen? Who Froze $2.7B of the Binance Hack
TANG has been trading crypto since 2017. The focus is technicals, DeFi and onchain data. On the chart, that means high-timeframe support, moving averages and momentum divergences. Onchain, it means regular checkups on where the data puts the cycle. TANG once ran CryptoJungle, a free community for researching and trading together, and brings that same spirit to Base Camp as one of its co-founders.
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