Multibillion-dollar bitcoin bridge called out for helping North Koreans launder stolen funds

A protocol that allows users to swap bitcoin (BTC) across different blockchains has once again found itself in hot water for allegedly helping North Korean hackers launder stolen funds. The team keeps bragging about its results even after prominent blockchain analysts call it out.

At first, last week, Jaz Gulati, the co-founder of Garden, the so-called bitcoin bridge, posted a screenshot supposedly showing that the protocol has facilitated $2 billion worth of BTC swaps, and asked, "Is this good?"

Yesterday, the team behind the protocol once again celebrated the bridged billions.

In both cases, it attracted criticism, as an unspecified share of this volume allegedly came from North Korean state-sponsored hackers trying to launder their funds.

First, security expert and researcher Taylor Monahan from the most popular Ethereum (ETH) wallet, MetaMask, called Gulati out, saying that this volume comes from funds stolen by North Koreans.

"It’s funds stolen from people, projects, and protocols in this industry. Stolen from your friends," she said, adding that this money helps the North Korean regime stay in power.

To this, Garden's co-founder replied that "user safety and compliance have always been our number one priority" and that the platform "has had address screening and AML measures in place since day one."

"It's worth noting that Garden is a non-custodial system, meaning funds cannot be seized or returned," Gulati said.

However, he didn't respond to Monahan's question about the percentage of the bridged volume that was stolen funds and money laundering.

While she didn't provide specific evidence showing that Garden has indeed bridged stolen funds, the security expert noted that she wouldn’t even know what this platform is "if I wasn’t tracing stolen funds through it every night."

Additionally, another blockchain sleuth, ZachXBT, called out Gulati for reposting "Chinese organized crime laundering nine figs and DPRK funds via your platform." The co-founder didn't respond to these accusations.

This is not the first time Garden has been accused of helping launder funds. In June, ZachXBT claimed that the platform collected more than 80% of its fees "from Chinese launderers moving Lazarus Group funds from the Bybit hack," also suggesting that Garden is "a fake decentralized bridge."

"Explain how it is 'decentralized' when I watched in real time for multiple days as a single entity kept topping up cbBTC liquidity from Coinbase for the Chinese launderers as they continued moving Bybit funds?" the sleuth asked, without receiving a reply from Gulati.

Meanwhile, today, the co-founder, while celebrating the $2 billion milestone, concluded by saying, "There are still plenty of problems to solve, but that's what drives us, and I couldn't be prouder of how far we've come!"

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