Bitfinex hack, new movements for 64,000 Bitcoin

New movements for Bitcoin from the Bitfinex hack in 2016. This was revealed by the Twitter account Whale Alert. 

Movements of stolen Bitcoin from the hack at Bitfinex

According to Whale Alert reports, there were numerous movements of Bitcoin stolen from Bitfinex in the 2016 hack. They occurred on 1 February. A number of transactions were made, some distinctly large: in at least 6 cases, 10,000 BTC were transferred. In total, according to Whale Alert, at least 64,000 BTC moved for a total of over $2.4 billion. 

The unique thing is that all movements are directed to an address that has 26 transactions and a balance of over 94,000 BTC, which translated into dollars, makes $3.6 billion.

In short, it’s a whale. 

What’s equally peculiar is that there are no outgoing movements ever made and that the wallet records movements only from 1 February, so it is an account opened rather recently. 

How should all this be interpreted? It is unlikely that those BTC are put up for sale since the address is now monitored and certainly it would be difficult to place them on an exchange, at least not on a centralized exchange.

The hack at Bitfinex 

Bitfinex was hacked in August 2016. The theft led to a loss of 119,756 BTC that are now worth $4.5 billion. Therefore, yesterday’s recorded movements involve half of the Bitcoin taken from the exchange by criminals. 

This is certainly not the first time those BTC have been moved. It had already happened other times, for example in 2019, 27 BTC were moved and in 2020, 5.6 BTC changed wallets. 

On other occasions, however, part of the loot was recovered. For instance, in December 2021, 6.5 BTC moved on the Poloniex exchange were recovered. The exchange clearly blocked the sum by detecting the origin from a wallet involved in the theft and returned them to Bitfinex. Whereas in 2019, thanks to the cooperation of the US government, 27.6 BTC were recovered.

Nevertheless, the bulk of the loot is still in the hands of criminals. This is a sum capable of moving the markets and perhaps alarming investors. But, as said, it will be difficult to sell them through centralized exchanges. It is also for this reason, perhaps, that Bitcoin has not been affected by the news and its price has remained stable at 38,200 dollars. 

From Bitfinex, they let it be known that they will continue to cooperate with the authorities:

 “Bitfinex continues to work globally with law enforcement agencies, digital token exchanges and wallet providers to recover the bitcoin stolen in the 2016 hack”.