On-chain investigator ZachXBT has identified French banking group Crédit Mutuel Arkéa as the alleged victim of a cryptocurrency theft exceeding $133 million, and cautioned on Wednesday that the real total is likely higher. The figure is an estimate drawn from on-chain tracing, and his warning leaves open the possibility that the tally grows as the analysis continues.

The pseudonymous sleuth is among the best-known figures in crypto investigations, having built a reputation for tracing stolen funds across blockchains and pressing exchanges to freeze illicit proceeds. His publicly shared on-chain analyses have been credited with aiding the recovery of stolen digital assets and have been used by law-enforcement authorities in multiple jurisdictions.

Crédit Mutuel Arkéa is one of France's major mutual banking groups, operating as a federation within the Crédit Mutuel network. The allegation places a mainstream banking institution at the center of a digital-asset theft, a category of crime that has most often targeted crypto-native companies, decentralized-finance protocols, and individual holders.

Large-scale cryptocurrency thefts have become a recurring problem for the industry in recent years, spanning exchange hacks, protocol exploits, and social-engineering attacks. Investigators such as ZachXBT typically publish their findings in an effort to flag suspicious fund movements and prompt trading platforms to intervene before stolen assets can be laundered. That pattern frames what to watch next: whether exchanges move to freeze flagged deposits, whether law-enforcement agencies in relevant jurisdictions take up the tracing, and whether the estimated loss figure is revised upward. For now, the identification stands as an on-chain allegation attributed to the investigator.

This content was first published on COINOTAG.