ZachXBT Names Crédit Mutuel Arkéa as Victim in $133 Million Exchange Drain

French banking group Crédit Mutuel Arkéa is allegedly the European institution behind a suspected crypto drain exceeding $133 million across accounts on centralized exchanges, according to onchain investigator ZachXBT ¹. The researcher posted the update to his Telegram channel on Nov. 4, identifying the victim as the cooperative banking entity, which holds $235 billion in assets ¹. Crédit Mutuel Arkéa did not immediately respond to a request for comment ¹.

ZachXBT stated that the intrusion spanned multiple days and cautioned that total losses could surpass $133 million once over-the-counter (OTC) trade volumes are settled and tallied ¹. The update follows his earlier disclosures, which initially tracked an unnamed European entity's missing $106 million pulled on Nov. 1 in $USDC and $USDT ¹. After uncovering an additional $27 million in exchange withdrawals on Nov. 3, ZachXBT revised the estimated total to $133 million ¹.

Laundering Paths and Exchange Freezes

According to ZachXBT's published findings, the perpetrator converted the drained stablecoins into $ETH, routed capital through instant swap platforms, bridged assets across networks, and exchanged portions into Monero ¹. ZachXBT contended that an absence of prompt public incident disclosures allowed the attacker to launder over $30 million before countermeasures took effect ¹. He noted he remains confident the activity does not originate from North Korea's state-sponsored Lazarus Group based on the laundering patterns observed ¹.

Centralized trading venues have initiated asset mitigations. Both Kraken and Crypto.com confirmed they restricted accounts or blocked addresses associated with the illicit flows ¹. At the time of writing, broader digital asset markets displayed muted reaction, with $BTC trading near $78,495 and the broader market cap at $2.63 trillion. If validated, the incident marks one of the largest direct exchange custody breaches affecting a regulated European bank ¹.