A wallet address labeled by blockchain security analysts as the “Coinbase hacker” bought $8 million in Solana on Sunday using reportedly ill-gotten gains.
According to Lookonchain, the hacker converted DAI (DAI) to USDC (USDC), then bridged to the Solana network and bought 38,126 Solana (SOL) near the $209 mark across multiple purchases.
Solana is currently trading at $202.15, meaning the hacker has made a paper loss since the trade.
Blockchain analytics platform Arkham has flagged the wallet address as “Coinbase hacker,” while Lookonchain claimed the wallet is linked to the theft of over $300 million from Coinbase users.
Hacker bought Ether in July
The alleged hacker first came to the attention of Lookonchain two months ago, when they sold 26,762 Ether worth $69.25 million at the time.
In July, Lookonchain said there were also two major purchases from the same wallet. On July 7, the same hacker bought 4,863 Ether, worth $12.55 million, then on July 19, they bought 649 Ether for $2.3 million, at a cost of $3,5621 per token.
Onchain sleuth and security analyst ZachXBT estimated in May that the total amount lost by Coinbase users to social engineering scams at $330 million, which he said reflected the growing number of sophisticated attack strategies to defraud crypto holders.
Radiant Capital hacker grows stack through trades
The Coinbase hacker isn’t the only one trading ill-gotten gains. Last week, a wallet connected to the Radiant Capital exploit bought 4,913 Ether around Wednesday, then sold 4,131 Ether on Saturday, making a profit of $2.7 million.
“Their stolen $49.5M stash has now grown to over $105 million,” Lookonchain said, representing an increase of around 114%.
Decentralized finance protocol Radiant Capital was hacked in mid-October 2024 when the cross-chain lending protocol suffered a $58 million cybersecurity breach on BNB Chain and Arbitrum.
The attacker swapped proceeds into Ether, holding around 21,957 Ether worth about $103 million, as of Aug. 14, according to Lookonchain.
Related: DOJ is investigating Coinbase data breach— Report
Experts told Cointelegraph at the time that it was unlikely to be a deliberate market-timing strategy and probably just an unintended consequence of evasion techniques to obscure the stolen loot.
Unknown hacker panic sells
However, some hackers haven’t been as lucky.
In July, Lookonchain was tracking a wallet they flagged as “likely belonging to hackers,” which sold 12,282 Ether and bought back in at a higher price during a market downturn, resulting in a loss of $6.9 million.
“Hackers are not good at trading,” the company said.
During another market dip, the same wallet panic sold 4,958 Ether on Aug. 15, locking in a profit of $9.75 million.
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