Suspected $106 Million EU Crypto Theft Shows How Stolen Funds Vanish in Hours

A second theft alert lands days after the biggest hack in crypto history

An unidentified entity in the European Union may have lost more than $106 million from accounts at multiple cryptocurrency exchanges on Sunday, November 1, according to blockchain investigator ZachXBT, who flagged the suspected theft in a Monday post. The losses have not been independently confirmed, and neither the victim nor the exchanges involved have been publicly named — but the trail ZachXBT published is detailed enough to read as a case study in how stolen crypto disappears in 2026. The suspected attacker withdrew funds in the stablecoins USDC and USDT, swapped the USDC for ether, ran the money through instant-exchange services, and converted part of it into Monero, the privacy coin that hides senders, receivers and amounts by default. ZachXBT published 11 wallet addresses linked to the suspected theft and said he could say with a high degree of confidence that the actor was not North Korea's Lazarus Group, based on multiple laundering indicators. That distinction matters: days after the FBI attributed the $6.3 billion Binance hack to the Lazarus-linked TraderTraitor group, this case looks like a different actor using a different playbook.

Step one: get out of freezable stablecoins, fast

The first move in the suspected EU theft explains the whole race that follows. USDC and USDT are the thief's biggest problem, because their issuers — Circle and Tether — can freeze addresses. In the Binance hack, TRM Labs says Tether froze about $971 million in USDT in the attacker's main receiving wallet roughly 37 minutes after the main sweep, and Circle froze about $823 million in USDC minutes later. The EU case started the same way: funds withdrawn in USDC and USDT, with the USDC quickly swapped for ether. Ether has no central issuer, so no one can freeze it — and that single swap is the moment the recovery odds collapse. The lesson for anyone holding large balances on exchanges is blunt: stablecoins are convenient, but they are also the only major crypto assets with a freeze switch, and attackers know the clock starts the second a theft is noticed. Freezes work only when investigators, issuers and law enforcement move within hours — which is exactly why the Mercado Bitcoin response, where nearly $10 million was frozen after a $49 million breach, was reported as a success rather than a routine outcome.

• USDC/USDT: issuers can blacklist addresses — the fastest recovery tool, but only if the funds are still there.
• ETH: no issuer, no freeze — the first hop out of stablecoins is the critical escape.
• Monero (XMR): hides sender, receiver and amount by default — the trail goes dark here.

Step two: instant exchanges, then Monero

After the ether swap, ZachXBT said the funds passed through instant-exchange services including WellWallet and Kyrrex, and were converted into Monero through a swap service called Wagyu. Instant exchanges exist to swap one asset for another quickly, often without accounts, and in this trail they served as the laundering middle layer: each hop breaks the simple chain of custody that a block explorer shows. Monero is the end of the visible road. Unlike Bitcoin or Ethereum, where every transfer sits on a public ledger, Monero obscures transaction details by design, making the funds far harder to trace and effectively impossible to freeze. A separate tracker, Lookonchain, noted a wallet buying roughly 27,500 ETH — about $63 million — in just a few hours, consistent with a rapid, large-scale conversion of the kind described. None of this proves the identity of the victim or the attacker, and the method of access — how the attacker got into the exchange accounts in the first place — remains undisclosed. But the sequence itself is now familiar enough to be a warning template: withdrawal, stablecoin-to-ether swap, instant-exchange hops, privacy-coin exit.

Why this case worries investigators more than its size suggests

At $106 million, the suspected EU theft is a fraction of the Binance hack — but investigators flag it for a different reason. The Binance theft was attributed to a state-linked group with a known playbook; this one, by ZachXBT's assessment, is not Lazarus, which means the laundering techniques on display are available to a much wider set of actors. The same weekend also produced a smaller alert: a wallet linked to King, an automated trading bot on Solana, may have lost about $786,000, according to monitoring account Onchain Lens. The pattern across all three November incidents — Binance, Mercado Bitcoin and now the suspected EU theft — is that exchange accounts, not blockchains, are the weak point, and that the first hours decide everything. Our recent coverage of the Mercado response showed the other side of that race: https://zimbuck.com/blogs/905/Chainalysis-Puts-the-Mercado-Bitcoin-Hack-at-49-Million-Across — coordinated freezes can still save millions, but only before the swap into ether and Monero. And the Korea emergency meeting after the Binance hack set out the practical defences in plain terms: https://zimbuck.com/blogs/840/South-Korea-Calls-Emergency-Exchange-Security-Meeting-After-the-6 — lock withdrawals to a whitelist, strip withdrawal rights from API keys, and use hardware-key two-factor authentication.

What users should do this week

• Turn on withdrawal address whitelisting on every exchange you use, with a delay on adding new addresses.
• Remove withdrawal permissions from API keys used for trading bots or portfolio trackers.
• Use hardware-key two-factor authentication, not SMS codes, for exchange accounts.
• Treat any "recovery" message after a hack as the attack itself — no legitimate exchange charges to unlock withdrawals.
• Remember that a freeze is not a refund: frozen funds still need a legal and exchange process to return.

FAQ

Is the $106 million EU theft confirmed? No — it is a suspected theft flagged by ZachXBT on November 2, with victim, exchanges and method of access undisclosed; treat it as an unconfirmed alert, not a confirmed loss.

Why swap stablecoins for ether first? Because USDC and USDT can be frozen by their issuers, while ether cannot — the swap is the attacker's escape from the freeze switch.

What is Monero's role? Monero hides senders, receivers and amounts by default, so converting into it effectively ends the public trail.

Was this the Lazarus Group? ZachXBT says no, with a high degree of confidence, based on laundering indicators — a different actor from the Binance hack.

Read more on Zimbuck: https://zimbuck.com/pages/zimbucknews and join the discussion at https://zimbuck.com/groups/zimbuckmarketnews . Source for this story: CoinDesk, ZachXBT flags suspected $106M theft from EU entity across crypto exchanges, https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2026/11/02/eu-entity-suspected-of-losing-usd106-million-from-crypto-exchange-accounts-zachxbt-says , and Cointelegraph, ZachXBT Reports $106M Crypto Theft Involving Exchange Accounts, https://cointelegraph.com/news/zachxbt-flags-suspected-106m-crypto-theft-as-solana-bot-faces-possible-786k-drain . This is market news and general information only, not financial advice. Join Zimbuck at https://zimbuck.com to follow more crypto coverage.