ZachXBT: 80% of Garden Finance Fees from Stolen BTC

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ZachXBT Claims 80% of Garden Finance Fees Tied to Stolen Bitcoin

Written by Aaron S.,

Editor-In-Chief

Last Updated: June 23, 2025

Key Takeaways

ZachXBT claimed that over 80% of Garden Finance’s recent fees came from laundering stolen crypto linked to the Lazarus Group;
He also questioned Garden Finance’s "decentralized" label by saying one Coinbase account repeatedly topped up its cbBTC pools;
Garden Finance’s co-founder argued that most fees were earned before the Bybit hack and called the claims misleading.

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ZachXBT Claims 80% of Garden Finance Fees Tied to Stolen Bitcoin

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Garden Finance, a Bitcoin-native decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol, is facing accusations from blockchain investigator ZachXBT.

ZachXBT said the platform earned most of its recent revenue from suspicious activity linked to the Lazarus Group, a hacking organization based in North Korea.

The claim was made in a June 21 post on X, where ZachXBT responded to a statement from Jaz Gulati, co-founder of Garden Finance. Gulati had shared that the project collected 38.86 BTC BTC $101,489.53 in fees, including $300,000 in just 12 days ending June 2.

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ZachXBT replied that this growth was largely built on funds coming from criminal sources. He stated that over 80% of those fees came from laundering efforts involving Bybit’s $3.42B stolen assets.

He also questioned the bridge’s setup, which advertises itself as "trustless" and "decentralized". He said he tracked a single Coinbase $3.42B -funded account that kept sending more Bitcoin into cbBTC pools to keep them active.

According to ZachXBT, this ongoing support from one source contradicts Garden’s claim of decentralization.

In response, Gulati argued that 30 BTC in fees were collected before the Bybit incident. He also denied the claim that the platform is not truly decentralized, which suggests the label of "fake decentralized" was unfair.

On June 19, ZachXBT and Taylor Monahan explained the reasons behind a new wave of crypto-related scams. What did they say? Read the full story.