US punishes Blender.io for helping North Korea launder millions in stolen Axie crypto
by Mitchell Clark from The Verge - All Posts on (#5YZ8H)
It says the Lazarus Group funneled around $20 million through the service. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The US Treasury Department announced on Friday that it's sanctioning Blender.io, essentially cutting the Bitcoin mixer off from the US financial system (legally speaking, anyway). The department alleges that the service, which lets people obfuscate the record usually kept by the blockchain, was used by North Korea to support its malicious cyber activities and money-laundering of stolen virtual currency."
According to the Treasury's press release, Blender.io was used by the Lazarus hacking group to launder $20.5 million worth of the cryptocurrency it allegedly stole from the crypto-based game Axie Infinity. The entire proceeds of the hack, which the Treasury linked to Lazarus and North Korea in April, were estimated to be worth around...