According to the Treasury’s press release, Blender.io was used by the Lazarus hacking group to launder $20.5 million worth of the cryptocurrency it allegedly stole from the crypto-based game Axie Infinity.
Blender.io wasn’t the only tool the hackers used, though — to start, the funds stolen from Axie Infinity’s Ronin network were originally in Ethereum and USDC, and Blender works with Bitcoin; at some point, there had to be a conversion.
The US Treasury also alleges that Blender laundered money for ransomware organizations like Conti, Trickbot, and Sodinokibi .
Because transactions are recorded on the blockchain, it can be very difficult to use stolen funds without using these types of services.
As happened with the Axie hack, governments can sanction wallets that are affiliated with hacking groups, and researchers can track stolen crypto’s movement.
Of course, as the Treasury points out, there are perfectly legal uses for this kind of service — people could use them to gain some semblance of privacy when making purchases with crypto, for instance.