Cryptocurrency exchange Bybit has paid out over $4m in bounties to people helping it track and freeze funds that were stolen during a $1.5bn hack last week.
The exchange launched the programme shortly after the hack took place. Any company or individual can take part and be rewarded for helping to track stolen funds and have them frozen.
Users must trace the stolen funds and then provide details of the transaction and the exchange or other crypto firm that is holding the funds.
So far just over 3% of the funds have been frozen by bounty hunters. Another tranche of funds worth $94.3m have been traced but not frozen.
Those funds were funnelled through an exchange called eXch, which has refused to cooperate with Bybit.
eXch claims that its refusal to cooperate is because Bybit has never responded to any of its own prior requests for help with stolen funds. It also denies that it helped process or launder funds derived from the hack.
Combining frozen funds and those that have been identified as potentially stolen, still means that more than 90% of the stolen funds have not been traced.
The current leader on the Bybit bounty programme – who’s username is Mantle – was responsible for close to $42m funds being frozen. Mantle’s total payouts have hit $2.1m.
