Although under $1 million was laundered via NFTs, experts warn the approach could scale and severely hinder on-chain investigators if adopted widely.
According to a new investigation, criminals behind the Bittensor hack laundered some money with anime NFTs. This was only a small portion of the total stolen money, but it proved very difficult to track.
Although it has a few drawbacks, this technique could frustrate crypto’s best sleuths. A former Opentensor engineer may have been involved in the scheme, but ZachXBT isn’t certain.
The crypto crime wave of 2025 has naturally included an increase in sophisticated money laundering techniques, helping hackers hide their ill-gotten gains.
However, they may be getting even better. According to a new investigation from ZachXBT, NFTs were used to launder proceeds from the $28 million Bittensor hack:
The Bittensor hack took place in mid-2024, causing a lot of trouble for the decentralized AI development firm. The company, for its part, has been rebuilding quite well in the intervening time, yet the hackers remained at large. Apparently, part of this is because of their new laundering techniques.
The sleuth had more than enough difficulty de-anonymizing classical laundering techniques like Railgun and other privacy tumblers. However, the perpetrators of this hack spent over $100,000 on anime NFTs, making the trail even colder.
The investigation included many interesting and scandalous pieces of circumstantial evidence. For example, a former engineer from the foundation that stewards Bittensor was implicated in the laundering.
This individual may have deployed an NFT presale that accepted hacked funds. Still, this isn’t certain.
ZachXBT called this tactic “extremely rare,” and noted that he couldn’t definitively accuse some NFT holders of the hack. Although in his opinion, “the relationship between each address is just too coincidental,” there’s evidently still a little ambiguity.
And this, mind you, comes from one of crypto’s most prominent on-chain sleuths.
Imagine, then, how well beleaguered law enforcement officials could react to this innovation. NFT data is still recorded on a blockchain, but it’s taken a top-level tracker a prolonged investigation to find some hack suspects.
He isn’t even certain of the findings.
This was a small-scale experiment. Criminals stole $28 million in the Bittensor hack, but apparently laundered less than $1 million via anime NFTs. Nonetheless, if it catches on, this technique could become a huge problem.
Hackers are already learning from each other faster than the crimefighters can. If criminals use NFTs to launder stolen money, they could become impossible to track.
