ZachXBT says more than $20 million in suspected illicit crypto moved through Hyperliquid-linked FXMR

ZachXBT says he tracked more than $20 million in funds he believes came from ransomware, malware distribution, and social engineering schemes, then identified a payments path involving FXMR on Hyperliquid. For PSPs and exchanges, the useful part is not the drama: it is the on-chain pattern, the venue mix, and how a permissionless listing process can let centralized services with laundering exposure sit inside the same trading environment.

1. ZachXBT says the funds included proceeds linked to the DCENT Wallet hack, September attacks on Fetch.ai and Axelar, and money connected to the recent exploit of Gamdom. He said the assets then moved through FXMR, which he described as part of a laundering flow.
2. According to the analyst, Hyperliquid’s operator provides liquidity for the private coin Monero (XMR) through centralized exchange KuCoin. He said there were more than 3000 deposits to the platform from addresses associated with the operator.
3. ZachXBT compared FXMR’s operating model with services such as Wagyu, which he has mentioned repeatedly in previous investigations. That matters for risk teams because the structure described here is not a one-off wallet event; it is a service layer used to route value across venues.
4. He said he passed all collected on-chain data to the Hyperliquid team. In other words, the case is already on the venue’s desk, which puts the focus on monitoring, listing controls, and whether the platform treats these services as just another market participant.
5. FXMR reached Hyperliquid Core through a Dutch auction, buying placement for 518,28 HYPE tokens, worth about $28 000 at the time. ZachXBT said this permissionless listing mechanism is what allowed FXMR and other centralized services potentially used for laundering, including b1exch, to appear on Hyperliquid Core.

ZachXBT also recently said he spent several weeks posing as a client of a Chinese money-laundering group tied to the theft of about $1,5 billion from crypto exchange Bybit.