Could THORChain face prosecution over stolen Bitget funds?

After suspected North Korean hackers exploited crypto exchange Bitget for $387.5 million last week, investigators were able to quickly flag and trace the recipient addresses. 

Bitget CEO Gracy Chen then controversially demanded that decentralized cross-chain swaps platform THORChain “refuse service to these addresses.”

THORChain responded:

“THORChain is decentralized and permissionless like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and BNB Chain. What responsibility should Bitcoin, Ethereum, and BNB Chain bear when handling known stolen funds?”

The move was controversial, especially given the protocol was halted immediately in May when $10.7 million of its own funds were exploited. Complicating matters, THORChain has retired its admin key and doesn’t have an easy way to censor addresses, even if it wanted to.

Source: THORChain

This exact controversy has come up before, as THORChain was used to swap around $1.2 billion of the funds stolen in the $1.46 billion hack of Bybit. It just so happened that THORChain’s admin key had been retired just 11 days earlier.

NEAR Intents took the opposite approach to THORChain. Its automated SHIELD program blocked addresses linked to the hack from swapping $50 million on the platform, and even turned down the 5% bounty Bitget was offering for doing so.

Now NEAR Intents is under fire from decentralization maxis for not being permissionless enough.

To discuss the legal issues involved in the case, Magazine spoke with Yuriy Brisov from D&A Partners. This is an edited version of the conversation.