Inside the Lazarus Group money laundering strategy

In the post-mortem of the $1.5 billion Bybit hack, two blockchain research organizations — Nansen and Chainalysis — have revealed the Lazarus Group’s money laundering strategy, which includes swapping illiquid assets for liquid assets, creating a complex money trail, and letting certain wallets sit dormant to let scrutiny die down.

According to Nansen, the typical Lazarus Group strategy first involves swapping the illiquid assets into those that are more fungible and, therefore, easier to move. After the Bybit hack, the perpetrator converted at…