Lazarus $30M BTC Sales Raise US DeFi Scrutiny

An analysis reviewed on Aug. 31 found wallets linked to North Korea’s Lazarus Group sold more than $30 million of Bitcoin via the Hyperliquid derivatives protocol in the three weeks before that date. The report shows the proceeds were converted into Ether and Solana tokens and then moved to exchanges including Kraken, LBank and KuCoin.

The Lazarus activity coincided with advanced talks between Hyperliquid Labs and Payward, the parent company of Kraken, about using a U.S.-facing venue to offer perpetual futures tied to tokens built on Hyperliquid technology. Payward completed its acquisition of Bitnomial on May 1 and acquired a regulated derivatives stack that includes a designated contract market, a derivatives clearing organization and a futures commission merchant.

CME Group and Intercontinental Exchange warned U.S. regulators in May that always-on, permissionless markets such as Hyperliquid can allow sanctioned actors to trade without the identity and surveillance controls used by regulated U.S. intermediaries. On June 18, CME filed Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. v. Selig, challenging a regulatory decision to classify some crypto perpetual contracts as futures rather than swaps; the court set response deadlines in early September and October.

Public information has not established how a Payward-linked U.S. venue would connect to Hyperliquid’s market. It remains unclear whether orders on the U.S. platform would execute against Hyperliquid’s order book, share liquidity, settle on Hyperliquid’s chain, or be hedged by Payward and market makers on Hyperliquid. That technical detail affects whether offshore trades could create direct compliance issues for U.S.-regulated customers.

ICE’s chief executive described the episode as a “wake-up call” and said the company was “not freaked out about Hyperliquid,” while CME executives have emphasized national-security and compliance concerns raised by the Lazarus findings in public and regulatory settings.

The Arkham analysis has entered regulatory and legislative discussion. Lawmakers, regulators and exchanges have cited the Lazarus activity when debating oversight of links between U.S. market infrastructure and permissionless offshore venues. Proponents of bringing token exposure onto regulated U.S. platforms point to onboarding, surveillance and sanctions-screening controls available under U.S. rules; others note that the connection details between onshore venues and offshore liquidity have not been publicly disclosed.