Shibarium Bridge Hack: $3M Stolen, No Police Case Filed

Community investigator Shima has meticulously mapped the path of the stolen funds, revealing a laundering operation that moved 260 Ether through the privacy mixer Tornado Cash. According to Shima’s public breakdown, the attacker subsequently routed 232.49 ETH through a network of 111 wallets before making 45 unique deposit transactions to the cryptocurrency exchange KuCoin. This detailed tracing work was shared with the Shiba Inu ecosystem team to aid in recovery efforts.

The investigation’s breakthrough came from a single, seemingly minor error by the hacker. A transfer of just 0.0874 ETH served as a critical link, connecting otherwise obfuscated wallets and allowing Shima to unravel much of the operation. This mistake underscores a fundamental tension in crypto investigations: while blockchain analysis can provide a transparent and immutable ledger of transactions, sophisticated laundering techniques like those employed by Tornado Cash are designed to break the chain of custody.

Despite the compelling on-chain evidence, practical recovery has hit a significant legal wall. When community members, including a representative from K9 Finance using the handle DeFi Turtle, contacted KuCoin to request a freeze on the suspected funds, the exchange’s response was unequivocal. KuCoin stated it requires a formal law enforcement case number before it can legally freeze assets or share internal account records.

This requirement creates a frustrating impasse. Exchanges like KuCoin operate under strict regulatory and legal frameworks that often mandate subpoenas or official police requests for action. Without a police report filed by the affected project—in this case, the Shiba Inu team—the detailed on-chain trail provided by investigators like Shima remains a map without enforcement power. The situation leaves strong technical leads stuck, dependent on formal legal action and complex cross-border cooperation that has yet to be initiated.

The lack of a police case has drawn sharp criticism from within the crypto community. Shane Cook, founder of Pulse Digital Marketing, publicly questioned why the Shiba Inu team has not filed an official complaint with law enforcement, despite confirming the breach and having engaged security firms like PeckShield and Hexens. Cook’s critique centers on the idea that technical analysis, no matter how detailed, is insufficient to compel third-party platforms like exchanges to cooperate; a legal filing is the necessary catalyst.

This criticism has fueled speculation that the project may have prioritized other objectives, such as reopening the Shibarium Bridge and planning for user repayments, over pursuing criminal complaints. Faced with this institutional inertia, investigator Shima has taken the step of offering the complete dataset, mapping work, and methodology directly to victims and any willing law enforcement agency. This move suggests that individual victims in various jurisdictions may need to lodge local complaints to generate the case numbers that exchanges demand, a fragmented and challenging path to recovery.

The standoff surrounding the Shibarium Bridge hack encapsulates a recurring challenge in decentralized finance. It demonstrates that even with transparent blockchain evidence and dedicated community investigation, the path to justice and asset recovery in the crypto space is often gated by traditional legal procedures. The $3 million question remains: when will the technical evidence be translated into the formal police action required to unlock the next phase of this investigation?