ZachXBT Tracked a $133M Crypto Theft for Two Days. Then He Named the Victim

On-chain investigator ZachXBT has named French cooperative bank Crédit Mutuel Arkéa as the alleged victim of a crypto theft. He estimates the losses at more than $133 million.

Crédit Mutuel Arkéa had not issued a public statement at the time of writing. ZachXBT also suspects the final figure is larger once over-the-counter (OTC) trades are counted.

How a $106 Million Alert Led to a French Bank

ZachXBT first flagged the incident on November 2. At the time, he said an unnamed EU entity had lost over $106 million from several centralized exchange accounts.

He said the funds left those accounts as USDC (USDC) and Tether (USDT). A day later, he reported another $27 million in exchange withdrawals. Some came after his first public warning.

In his latest update, ZachXBT said the institution is allegedly Arkéa. He described the bank as holding $235 billion in assets and said the alleged attack ran over multiple days.

Arkéa groups the Crédit Mutuel de Bretagne and Crédit Mutuel du Sud-Ouest federations. Its roughly 40 subsidiaries include the online bank Fortuneo.

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Why ZachXBT Says $30 Million Could Have Been Frozen

Before naming Arkéa, ZachXBT’s working theory was that a large Western European financial institution had been exploited. He also suspected the incident was being covered up.

“No proper incident disclosure has resulted in $30M+ being laundered away which could have been frozen by EU law enforcement,” he noted.

Blockchain analytics firm Bitquery separately traced $108.8 million in USDC tied to the suspected theft. The withdrawals left Kraken, Crypto.com and OKX accounts over about 21 hours on November 1 and 2.

Bitquery also found that $62.98 million in stablecoins became 27,553 Ethereum (ETH) within roughly four hours. 

Stablecoin freezes have stopped far larger sums this year. After the Binance hack, issuers including Tether and Circle froze about $2.9 billion, according to Grayscale. That covered roughly 45% of the stolen funds.

The note added that the Binance attack pushed 2026 crypto security losses to a record above $8 billion.

“Unfortunate as it is, the Binance hack will, in our view, result in stronger security practices for exchanges going forward. It also underscores the importance of institutional custody, such as offered by US-based crypto ETPs,” Zach Pandl, Grayscale Head of Research, wrote.

BeInCrypto has contacted Crédit Mutuel Arkéa for comment and will update this story with any response. A confirmation would add a regulated European bank to 2026’s crypto theft victims.

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