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A hacker return stolen crypto (https://punchng.com/hacker-returns-stolen-600m-crypto-says-im-not-very-interested-in-money/?utm_source=auto-read-also&utm_medium=web&amp)



How can that happen that a hacker does that I return the stolen crypto and say he is not interested in money. This is funny K can say that. What do you think about this story.

This is absolutely one of the very interesting stories. But actually, we have witnessed some other hackers doing the same thing also. I don't know, it seems like their main goal is to show the companies their flaws and help them fix those ones. Maybe these hackers would want to work at those companies as white hat hackers or something related.  ;D  There are many possibilities to think about.

Maybe the hacker reached a dead-end and realized there are more walls to break before they can actually benefit from their loot. We can only speculate. But whatever their reason, at least it helped reveal the security flaws that could cost investors' their life savings. We're lucky to have lived during the budding stage of cryptocurrency but not so lucky that we have to deal with so many risks.

He very likely wouldn't be able to use all the stolen money because it would be impossible to launder them all. Also there's nothing wrong with not wanting to have $600m, plenty of people have lower needs so it's not worth the headache. And the hacker is probably already doing quite well financially, so why should he risk punishment for money that he doesn't really need?

There's already a massive blockage to the address that he'll use if he's going to transfer that to exchanges and turns into cash. But he might also be telling the truth that it's part of the plan. There are hackers that have a purpose to expose and exploit a system's security but also have the plan of letting know the developers or security maintainer of it what's the flaw that they've found. Well, it's going to be unknown if he's telling the truth or not.

You suddenly have everything you need in your life although until now you've lived a modest one. These $600M are hard as hell to keep concealed.

Usually, you can either return the sum and be rewarded a certain % for returning it or you can return the sum and be hired by the company's security team. This makes your millions legal income and so you have zero worries about losing your freedom for your actions.

Yeah these are the main reasons for doing something like this.

Getting a job might be better than getting the money if you're bad with money too as it should be more consistent.

I wouldn't know the best way to return funds to a company though so if that was preplanned by the attacker then I guess they could probably be assumed to be honest. There might be the obvious additional threat that they're wanting to be trusted by the company to carry out a larger attack though - which will probably be/has been something the company can assess if the attacker was aiming for the job route.

Afaik, some exchange already track the hackers address that's why they already know the hacker identity. Probably the hacker was scared on suing him by the polychain network network because he was already doxxed so he probably chose the easiest way to get out this shit and earn some profit for raising a flaw on the code of the project.

Yeah, but you'd think if a hacker was smart enough to pull off such a massive hack, they would have had to know that in advance.  I'm sure whoever did it was familiar with crypto and knew how hard it would be to keep the stolen coins.

I haven't followed the story since it came out, so does anyone know exactly what the outcome was?  It seems logical that if "Mr. White Hat Hacker" was looking to poke holes in Poly's security, he'd return the money (which he did), but has there been any news as to whether charges were filed or anything like that?  That article OP linked to is a mess, and it's a few weeks old.

But man....how tempting would it be for anyone who had their hands on $600 million worth of crypto to just run away with it?  I know the guy said he has no interest in money, but I have my doubts about that.

A person who is skilled enough to be able to steal more than $600 million worth of cryptocurrency should not be risking one's life and freedom for the sake of money.

The hacker must have what it takes to get a decent job and steady source of income. He/she must not be in bad need of money. So why should he/she be courting a complicated and even dangerous life?

In fact, with this alone, he/she is already offered half a million as a reward and even a chief security advisor position.

Perhaps it was not the plan in the beginning, but when he made a mistake and knows that in due time he can be track and sent jail then obviously the best thing to do is to return back the stolen $600 m and claim that you wanted to show the security flaw in the beginning.

And how can he encash that huge amount without being track as well? He can make his life smaller and miserable with that hack. And in return, he got $500k, that's a good bargain already.

There was another thread already discussing his motifs when he returned the first half of the money.
One "direction" was that there may have been that he made a mistake and basically he has revealed his identity (he used centralized exchange) and all his "good willing" was basically to save him from being sued/jailed for theft.

We have to look clearly each details of what happened since there are many possible reasons.
I think one of the "best" is called "JAIL" ... even if you don't have too much time to spend there , I am pretty sure life will be not easy despite this huge amount of money.

Because there are 2 categories of people that want find an hacker like this:
1 people that has lost funds
2 people that want stole your funds

As others have said, $600M may seem like something that someone wouldn't really want to give to others, but if it was obtained illegally, it would be quite hard to explain where it came from unless you have a lot of connections that could possibly help you. It's a big amount that wouldn't really escape the eyes of those who want to look into it after all, so if the hacker himself wasn't careful, he'd be caught quite easily. It'd be much easier to turn it over and say something that would fix his reputation by a bit than wanting it all.

Sides, since he was able to hack something like that, he'd probably get a good job that would be worth his time no? Someone skilled like that would always be wanted by big companies.

It's really hard to say. I noticed that after SlowMist, an investigative firm, found the identify of the hacker, including the email, the funds were returned immediately. That means the hacker got scared that he might get caught in that situation. Although, he was handed $500,000 as a rewarded and still refused to get it means he isn't really interested in money.

Him just wanting to exploit the flaws of the company as a white hacker is still the best scenario in my opinion.

A person who can break such a jackpot one time by hacking into any company proves to himself and everyone that money is not a problem for him. I think that everyone should understand this. For him, hacking is a passion that goes beyond monetary interests. Moving from step to step higher, he simply shows his strength and intelligence, and at the same time gaps in the networks of companies.
I already wrote somewhere about the fact that fishing, with catching a fish and releasing it, is tantamount to the actions of this hacker.
Passion, nothing more.

You might be surprised as to what can qualify as a "hacker". The world is full of published exploits, bugs and glitches between different pieces of software. Someone who is fairly amateur but with enough time on their hands could potentially string together enough bugs that gave them access to critical functionality within this exchange. They might have taken the money just to be sure they could have control of it (and confirming it was insecure), then panicked when they realized how much heat it was actually going to bring on them. There have been many other cases where the hacker is eventually identified (some of the best investigators have likely been hired along with law enforcement investigations) with the end result of the hacker getting long jail terms - this might have been an attempt to avoid it. However there are many possible theories that might be true.

Some hackers are really not very understandable. They just aim to show the security flaws of the company they hack and then return the money. Just think about it. Would you return an amount worth $600m?  ;D  I assume that he/she will be given a small amount of prize for finding out the security flaw. I'm not sure if it is worth it unless you earn really great amount of money already. I know that he will have to run from the government this time if he doesn't return the money. But in that situation, it must be really hard to decide what to do.  ;D

I don't think he is not interested in money, the hacker was tracked and he was given a warning that authorities will pursue him, if they did not track the hacker will withdraw the money, hacking has a serious impact on the market if there is news of hacking expect the market to go down, even if they have good intention these hackers should be charged and prosecuted.

As far as I know, he demanded to keep a certain amount as a reward, so I wouldn't say he didn't care about the money - and the fact that he didn't keep everything may stem from a pre-planned operation that he would keep only a certain percentage - or it's just about to some inexperienced kid who at some point was afraid he would get caught.

However, I would like to point out another possibility, and that is that hacking was actually fake in order to promote a certain platform - which in the end was achieved, because it was reported by all mainstream media.

The fear of punishment drove this guy into returning the funds.
Having 600M USD worth of crypto is like having 600 million problems.Where to hide them?How to launder that amount?How to continue being completely anonymous?There are lots of questions and difficulties.
He is definitely not an ethical hacker.A true ethical hacker would never steal a large sum of money and return that sum.Ethical hackers usually contact the platform owners,when they find a security flaw.They don't just steal the coins.

From which source you got that information? I just wondering since according to the above sources provided by OP this "Mr. White Hat" has been offered $500k as rewards by the exchange and wouldn't push any responsibility to him for this incident nevertheless he refused and would send the money back

I've thought about the possibility of it as well, I guess it's so tiny. However, if that was their true intention since the beginning then they have achieved it with huge success.

LOL, an interesting story. Well, I have seen a few hackers do this, they hack the company and steal their money and return it after. It do happen, and like some comments here have said, they do it to make the company realize the faults in their system. And sometimes these companies can go ahead to even hire these hackers to work for them and fix these things.

I have even seen companies that hired and paid white hathackers to check their platform and discover where their security might be faulty. One of the companies that I have seen do this in the past is Coinbase, there was a time they were hiring white hat hackers. So this is nothing new, and it’s good to have these hackers around, and not just the bad ones.

There are only two possibilities that I can think about why something like this can happen, the first one is that he's in fact telling the truth, we need to know that a lot of hackers do not really have an economic motivation when they do what they do, most of the time they care about the challenge of being able to perform a great hack, I know this doesn't really make a lot of sense for a lot of us but that is the mentality that they have.

The other possibility is that he in fact had the intention of stealing that money but he was unable to erase his tracks completely and the authorities were behind him already and then he decided to change his story and then he returned the money in order to avoid going to jail.

These scenarios you pointed out may really be the reasons why the hacker returned the money. Some of them don't care about the money anymore, especially if they are already settled in life. So what they are after is recognition from their community about his capabilities to hack a multi-million dollar company or show to the company about their vulnerabilities. Whereas, the possibility that he has not erase all his tracks may possibly be the reason and he just said that it is part of his plan to return the money. I guess, hard to know the absolute truth on this matter.

This is really one of the very interesting news we got recently. We have known for a long time that hackers attacked crypto exchanges and many companies to steal an incredible amount of money from them. And this caused us to think that once hackers infiltrate the security system of a company, there is no salvation. However, this example is one of the rarest ones. I don't remember something like this happened so many times so far. Companies must be really lucky to come across hackers who have good will.  ;D  It looks like he/she just wanted to show the security problems in his/her own way. This company must give the hacker a really good prize. Otherwise, it might not end up well for them in the future, who knows.  :D

None can conclude his mind thought. I've got two different  understanding. He has showed him as a good Samaritan, maybe by nature he's not interested in others money and needs to pin point the flaw. The next is the fear of legal issues for theft. In the past people found it difficult to trace, but now things are getting easier. He could've got traced and warned, if not he couldn't have returned the entire fund. Atleast he could've taken a small pinch of it.

He should think of the consequences if he steals the money. He may return the money to him just to show off his skills.
Maybe there is enough money. There are many ways to launder money. As long as he wants, he can launder money little by little.
We cannot understand what hackers are thinking. Every hacker is a genius.

You'd be stupid to believe that someone would be such a selfless good Samaritan for absolutely no reason.

I think that there was certainly some sort of leverage that the network held against him, or he screwed up covering his paper trails. Certainly not something that was voluntary in the slightest.

Another possibility was that he simply didn't anticipate the success that he would have and the sheer value of the hack. It's hard to keep thing down low when it's a whole network's assets being hacked as you know they'd be coming after you with all their resources.

In my opinion 600 million dollars is a huge amount and it is very difficult to launder into legal money , There is no reason for a good hacker to not be greedy , All problems like I said above are 600 million Dollars are a huge amount of money . All life around us is controlled by laws and banks , if he suddenly becomes rich and has a huge amount of money in the bank card he/she will be immediately suspected money laundering through cryptocurrencies. It is also possible that this is a type of hacker who just mistakenly aims to find the company's vulnerabilities to see their mistakes and help them fix those mistakes.

It's just a simple answer: there are still nice people in the world because he/she returned it, he just exposed it or pentested it with his knowledge, or he simply did it for fun because he didn't want the money. I'm not a hacker, but it's incredibly satisfying if you've pawned a website legally, but it makes you nervous when it comes to illegal activities. But, in the end, he basically tried to pawn the website for a fun.

If the source has accurate information, then the hacker has conditioned that the $33 million in USDT be unfrozen as a condition that he return the remaining amount, which is much more than the $500 000 offered to him if he cooperates. He seems to have targeted stablecoins after all, just as I mentioned before, he’s not someone who knows the basics - because he obviously didn’t know that stablecoins like the USDT can be frozen.

^Alright, I got the point now. Somehow that part was missing in OP's reference source, which makes me a bit confused with the whole story once read your post earlier. I have the same thought as you if the hacker not very interested was totally a lie since he has targeted a certain amount on it.

Even if he does that it was still wrong in the first place to do such thing, this might be taken as having good intentions in the first place but at the same time it's a breach of security.

-There is something called *hacking* and then there is something called *ethical hacking*, here I am pretty sure that there was nothing ethical going on and at the same time if he was not interested in money, he could have just transferred or taken, just 1$!! That might have worked out perfectly well too.

Maybe he was too scared of being discovered since he might have left some small clues on the way and realized it, this was just an intelligent move to cover it up.

Didn't the hacker had a statement about why he didn't want the money and he just returned it, the only one that I remembered was that he wanted to show the vulnerability of the company or something like that. It's sort of like a power play to me in my opinion because that man is clearly implying that he can do what he wants.

he already explain the reason and maybe he is rich already ? and theres also people that dont want money but there are more important things for them such as helping other people , practicing and improving their skill . in his case his skill is hacking and he did both  .
he hack the website before other bad hackers hack it  . thats a rare kindness he shows but i hope he continue this good deed in other exchanges and time will come that no people will get hacked and lost their funds .

Cause the dudes a white hat hacker meaning that they aren't in it for the money, they're all about the puzzle and problem solving and trying to deter the real bad guys. They're like the white knights of the internet except they aren't a deplorable human being who worship e-girls.

Curious to know about why they do that since they already got that huge amount from their action did but seems the hackers is not on bad side so maybe they want to warn all the platform the possible damage they possibly got for not securing their platforms. For sure many are now putting some extra efforts to make their site more secure and thanks for that hackers since this could save us for upcoming attacks since for sure the exchange are now prepared for any possible attempts.

There were several times already that the hackers who have stolen a huge sum of money returned back what they stole to the company. I guess hackers do this either because they just want to expose that the security of the company has its weak spot that needs to be addressed and fixed or they suddenly realize the gravity of what they did and decided they can't go and push through because there are still many obstacles that need to be destroyed. Although I think most of the time the reason is the former. I don't think the hackers would go to such great lengths if they aren't equipped with enough knowledge and skills to totally bag the assets. They just want the company owners to be shaken and show the risk of being complacent about the security. Because once the security is infiltrated by hackers and is compromised, all the savings, assets, and investments of the people who trusted the company are at extreme risk. Consistent maintenance and update is a must to avoid scenarios like this. A lesson with a grain of salt to other ceo's.

I'm thinking of two theories about the Polygon cross-chain theft of $600 million.
First, this project hacks itself to polish its name and the $600 million return event was staged by themselves.
Second, there is a hacker like 'Mr. ROBOT', he doesn't care about money. His attack is just a warning for the DEFI and crypto space.

I guess the hacker later realized that the money he or she stole, will expose he or she negative way and also not to be call a bad person, that make he or she to returned the $600m crypto. But many people are calling he or she a good person not knowing that no way he or she can spend the money freely without be caught.
There are some people you cannot hack their money and go free with it. Either you return the money or your damage your future.

Perhaps he cares more about his identity (that is, if the identity is compromise) although it seems odd to me that a hacker was not able to hide his identity before carrying out a hack operation! I thought hackers are smart and they do this for the love of the money, anyways this just my assumptions.

That's nonsense you don't steal something that you are not interested in, if they want to show their hacking skills, they should have applied to expose vulnerabilities, companies will be happy to reward them if they can find exploits and help them to patch it, they surrender the money because they do not have an escape plan, they thought they can pull it and not get traced.








 

He knew he will have to be in hidden for the rest of his life and also there might be trackable foot print behind the hack too, it's better to get paid in money that you can actually spend openly than been paid with dirty money that you can only spend in hidden

Nothing can "make" them return the money. This guy may have done it, but he wasn't "made" to give it back, he gave it back because he wants to. I mean if I have 600 million dollars in my account, no matter how dangerous it is to cash that out, I would figure out a way, hell I would deal with mafia or other illegal people and find a way to still do that, as long as I can keep that money as it is, that alone itself is a big deal, if I am a bad hacker who wants to keep the money, I can find any way possible.

However at the end of the day this was a good person who gave it back, even if you catch a bad one, they will go to jail knowing that they have 600 million dollars, I would go to jail for the rest of my life if it means I will have 600 million dollars, at least my family would live a great life somewhere they can't be found. This is why nobody can be forced to give it back, only good people would do that.

- The first reason may not be established when the hacker attack event is most likely to affect the user's demand, you may think that there is a large volume of tokens of unknown source and unknown where lurking in the market, once it's sold off, users will live on their own interests and not think for the project. The second reason is more reasonable for this situation, hackers love to confront advanced layers of security and networks, successful stealing has been their biggest reward, money can't be spent so easily, the network is not a place where talent is lacking

Well, the thief or the act of stealing can not be called good no matter what, else it would be like calling evil good or good evil. The most important thing is that the money is returned to their owners which is a good thing. By the way, this is probably the second time in Crypto space I've read about someone returning huge amount of money obtained in similar manner

Most people's idea about a hacker is the movie type hacker. Glasses, hoodie, looking like a regular guy, sometimes even going as far as to wear some insignia that allows them to be recognized by regular people, but the thing is this doesn't happen in real life (wow really never thought of that lol). There are three types of hackers out there, white-hats, black-hats, and gray hat hackers. White-hat hackers are the good guys basically, they are the types of hackers that will breach systems and networks to find weak links and report them to the developers to reinforce the security within that site. The black-hats are the ones who do criminal activities, stealing identities and money online, extortion, you know the likes, and then there's the gray-hats, these types of hackers will either do illegal stuff for fun and then reestablish or return stolen goods just for the sake of it. I would assume this guy who stole $600M worth of crypto could be classified as a gray-hat. He's basically a good guy who tried to play with people's feelings and money in the process. Sure he returned the money under his own will, and we'll never know what made him return the money besides the fact that he felt like returning it. But the fact remains that he stole the money first for something, what that reason may be we do not know, but that alone puts him in my book as one of the best if not the best gray-hat hackers out there.

Maybe he returned it because he cannot withdraw it anyways, his address were flagged already in all exchanges that's why he doesn't have the choice but to return it.  ;D He said he just did it to test the security protocol but I would say he just bluffing and just run out of place because for sure he will be caught eventually.

The simple thought is where it will be the place to help hackers consume this money, maybe for many people it is very big and meaningful, personally I also find it too big. But organizations and white hat groups are never going to let someone last long, and I think it's a natural and wise move to give the money back. And of course we see that the attacker is not quietly condemned, but instead I find it commended for discovering serious vulnerabilities.

Many say because he prefers the rewards on offer over keeping $600M, he prefers a safer way of enjoying the fruits of his work, not the easy task of converting $600M into fiat without revealing his identity, mostly have to use CEX which also requires KYC, imagine if he choose the most basic one with a very small limit it takes a long time for him to be able to exchange all $600M into fiat and that long time gives the police a chance to track him and finally catches him.

But he always has a choice to just let it float in the wallet instead, he made an effort to give it back. That's the twist.
If you are a hacker and you are cornered you will just let it go and move on. Maybe come back years after and try if you can salvage something.
IMO, he really wants to prove something. Who knows if he is really part of their team before as white hat hackers but was kicked out and now he tried to look for the flaw and attack it as means of revenge or just so they could realize that he is a loss to their team.

There are 3 scenarios --

1st is that - hacker finds out that he had already near to be caught and nowhere to hide so the only option is to return the funds and go on in life .

2nd is that - hacker had an agreement from the authority that all he need to do is return the funds and the case will be forgotten .

3rd is that - the hacker does not really tend to do harm , maybe there is a little curiosity hehind Him.

Isn't the hacker a white hat meaning that they care more about finding vulnerabilities in a given system than the money itself. I don't have any way to confirm his a white hat though but I feel like only a white hat hacker will have that kind of thinking.

In my deepest heart when I saw the subject I thought within myself it can only be God who makes such hackers return that amount of money. Whatsoever the case might be I know it was to prove and make a point.

Well, although it is unlikely that such people exist, there are, but if he said that money is not his priority, it is because he wants to show that he is the best, although many projects should start hiring him because what that person knows about security is a lot , it knows how to break some codeps and this is something to take advantage of.

He must also be passionate about what he does, there are people who like what they do so much that he did not give him any regrets to return that money, besides that he speaks well of the type of person that he is.

That's like gamers, some only dedicate themselves to games just because they like it and money is important to them, but as long as they cover their gaming needs, they are happy, that kind of people if there are any.

I think this hacker considered the possibility that all Crypto currencies will eventually be traced back to the owner (hacker) ..even after it was pushed through Mixer services. It only takes one Mixer service to expose hackers or to release their logs (yes some say they do not keep logs, but they do) for the tables to be turned on them.

I even believe that some of these Mixer services are honey traps for 3letter agencies. (They collect the data and they never reveal how they got to their information.... they just make up a story to say it was something else that pointed them to the hacker or criminal)  ::)

I do agree that there was a proving point for sure, there is no doubt about that, if he was a truly a bad person all he had to do was do nothing, yeah sure maybe he can't spend the money but at least he could have simply hold it there and he would still be a bad person with a lot of money, he could have even spent it as in send it to some people in exchange of some services, or hell he could have done p2p in some places as well, would have taken a lot of time but if he could find people who are unaware of the situation he could have done that, or he could have used ATM machines that had these coins as well, not common but maybe there are some.

Long story short this is something that could have been done, I know it is not common but this guy turned out to be a good person for sure.

Two possible reasons;
1. Hacker doesn't want to get exposed for having that huge amount of money.
2. Or the hacker could be rich and just want to expose the system flaws for being vulnerable to hacking, or he just want to prove to himself that he could do such thing.

There were actually people who has been doing what they love to do not only because of money. Crypto is hard to be traced he could've gone to several mixing services and slowly spend them over time, but he didn't.

Real or not but what matter most here is that he returned that $600M which is something that you could live your life to the fullest since you do have the money to spent.

But not everything could really be bought by money which there are indeed good hearted people who do really mind off about being ethical despite of being a hacker doesnt mean that all of them
are bad and there would be still always that someone who do really make good deeds.

Kudos to that hacker! 8)

We don't know the real reason behind it as I doubt these hackers will try to say anything about it.

But since they will return what was stolen, then it's good for all.

After that, the exchange should now hire the best of best developers and site operators to upgrade the security of the site to prevent the same case in the future. Not all hackers will return a stolen money. That was crazy to think.

I believe more in the second possibility that you mentioned and it happens a lot, usually hackers just want to prove their abilities. The goal is that there
are hackers who want to be accepted for work on the platforms that he managed to hack,  by showing the weaknesses of the systems of those platforms.
Or there are also hackers who really want to have fun doing this, because sometimes for hackers to do this it can get their adrenaline pumping. It's true
that not all hackers do that just for money, so it's not surprising to find a hacker who finally returns the stolen crypto.

If they are in it for the thrill and helping out the platforms that they are hacking. There’s really no incentive for them in returning such a huge amount IMO, except if they just really want out to point some vulnerabilities and are doing the hacks in good nature and education to the platform owners. Good thing they returned that kind of sum, because if other people did that, that $600m will be gone in no time without a trace.

Probably morals or just the thrill of solving a complex puzzle which is represented by the company of Poly Network. There are other reasons but most of them are financials, not to mention that the hacker wanted to demonstrate his power to the company and directly telling them that they can't do anything if he finds sone vulnerabilities and probably the dudes too scared of going to jail knowing how deplorable going to that is.

Not sure if he has the moral compass to return the loot. He could have told the project themselves ahead of the hacking and shows the vulnerabilities of their application. With that there is no hacking at all and everything will not blown out of proportions. So to make the matter worst, the hackers could spent time in jail because that stealing. But he avoided it by returning everything and getting $500k bounty instead. So everything ends good, and lessons are learned here

There can be many reasons. Firstly, there are some whitehat hackers and they will not abuse the victim, they will only attack to show the security waekness and show the owner of the service how weak security they got or they may attack to just show their power and knowledge however 600m is a lot for anyone to be tempted and take the money and run away. They other reason can be the police department, sometimes the hacker will take the money and even transfer everything but he is scared of getting caught by police so he won't take the risk. I believe the second reason can be the main reason mostly.

That defeats the purpose of the hacker doing a white hat hacking, by telling them to be alert, the hack will not be realistic because I am sure that if they up the security at that time, they won't be able to keep it up everyday so they try to make it look like it's business as usual so it's much more realistic.

This hacker must be an angel or something like that.  ;D  Joking aside, there are not only bad hackers, there are good ones also who we call them as white hat hackers. This hacker must be one of them. He/she just wanted to show the security leak of Poly Network. Normally, it would be really hard for a person to return this much money. But it looks like he really just likes doing his job like this.

Also, there are innumerable stories of people alerting software companies to security flaws and the companies not taking them seriously or outright ignoring the reports.  But a highly publicized hack is something the company cannot ignore, so much more likely to get better and faster results to upgrade the security.

This has been a very crazy thing while I was in cryptocurrency and it really got the spotlight and news in almost all countries including mine.
$600 million is not a small amount and it takes time and money to hide it a bit extreme, besides that maybe they have experienced tremendous dizziness because to hack it requires extraordinary technique and genius besides that they also have to destroy all walls which limits being able to enjoy the results of their loot and this is very difficult for me to think about :)
despite all that, there is a lot of speculation and possible things that might happen, but even though they did bad things and still took some of the loot they still took the positive side, especially for platforms where there are still many things that need to be improved, especially in the security system so that they don't experienced the same thing for the second time.

I would do this if I am the hacker and put the talent in good use and don't have to worry anything. For the hacker, i think it would be imposible to launder it all without being detected or it might be that the hacker is afraid to get trace.

If I was the boss of one of the biggest companies in the world, I would really like to work with hackers like this in my security department.  ;D  Because it is obvious that this person doesn't aim to just rob people or companies and go on his way. This person likes to discover the security vulnerability of a place. He can be a great help for a company to make its security system much stronger.

Or I'm thinking really wrong about this.  ;D

I think the hack happens because it serves two purposes.
The first goal is money, if the goal is money the target is usually a banking site. the second goal is to measure how far the capabilities he has or how great the security of a site. This type of hacker will not take money or information from the site, even hackers will tell the weakness of the site. maybe the hacker we're talking about is the second type of hacker.

That Black Hat hacker firstly hacked the Crypto. And then return those and act like a White Hat hacker. I think that the hackers goal is not to stole the money. The hacker want to show himself and want to show his name in front of the world. Also he have the goal to work like a White Hat hacker and lead a life with honesty. I think that hacker thinking about the life after death. Also he think that this is a huge amount and he can face a huge problem for that if he want to use those money. After all he make a decision and return all the $600m crypto to the company and showing them their bugs.

Honestly it could still be fear, at first I imagined it would be just his good heart or something but I honestly think that it could be fear. This is not just few million dollars, it is not smaller, it is 600 million dollars and when you steal that much money then it becomes a big trouble for you, not just getting it out because you will never getting it out to a normal bank and live with 600 million dollars, nobody in the world would allow you to do that, not even Deutsche bank who launders money from mafia, so that means that money is stuck with you and you can't spend all of it.

However I believe it is more than that, it is the fear of constantly looking behind your back to see if anyone is out to get you, that fear is not something anyone would want for a life time.

The second theory that you propose is something that I thought as well and it could very well be the truth.

However I do not think the first scenario that you present is realistic, why would they go through the trouble of supposedly hack themselves only to return the money? This would make more sense if the money was never returned, in this case there will be some lingering suspicion about the developers and their possible involvement but with the money returned this does not make sense as they have damaged the image of their project in the process.

Honestly,it wouldn't really be that a problem because you wont really be needing for it to be bulk or one time transaction if you do really intent to have lots of money and as a hacker then that wouldn't
really be a problem since he can sustain himself.

It is just he had done just ethical and not all hackers are really that bad and some of them are white-hat which do consider out on making good things if they do know that its for the own
good of its investors or people involved.

Not all things can be bought by money.

It's not every hacker in the world that is bad. There are the good ones as well, although there are now lots of bad ones. So, for a hacker to return up to $600 million, that means he's a really good person. People have a purpose why they do things, some of these hackers are just doing it for fun, also doing it for a really good purpose, while others are just some bad guys who are looking for those that will fall into their traps.

I have seen hackers who donated it's still in money to a foundation, a typical example of robinhood story I guess.  and  just like some comments here have pointed out, some of the hackers are just doing it to show companies where their security is lacking.

Not everyone likes to spend time in jail. Some people would say, give me millions and spend me in jail for ten years but some people just simply can spend a week in jail, it would make them insane and it also depends where the person has to be in.
Maybe all he needed was to become popular for a second and that's all. Otherwise, if he is a white hat, we would just reveal the bug. And if he is good at anonimity, he would keep the gains (millions) in his pocket. Seems he was able to hack but unable to hide his identity.

Maybe that's what his plan after all and nothing more. Maybe he wanted to test his skills. Not everyone is after money. Some folks live a very modest life and are truly contented with what they already have. Besides  I believe there's  an intrinsic reward behind his action. 

According to the statements made by the hacker he was afraid that if he reveled the bug to the developers there is the possibility that one of those that got that information could have used the bug to get the money instead and disappear with it.

And I think the hacker has a point since we are talking about 600 million dollars here and that is too much money to not be tempted by it, but obviously that only makes sense if we actually believe his story, which many decide not to and think he simply gave back the money as he was afraid to go to jail.