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Criminal Crypto Mastermind Begins Moving Stolen Bitcoin (BTC) From $72 Million Hack

May 23, 2020

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The hacker behind the $72 million heist on the Bitfinex exchange in 2016 appears to be moving more of the stolen Bitcoin.

Whale Alert reports that the hacker’s account shifted 28.39124 BTC, worth $261,600 at the time of writing, to an unknown wallet.

? 28.39124 #BTC (255,863 USD) of stolen funds transferred from Bitfinex Hack 2016 to unknown wallet

Tx: https://t.co/S3v5FGeBV4

— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) May 21, 2020

In August 2016, Bitfinex was hacked for more than 119,756 BTC, worth roughly $72 million at the time. That same total is worth more than $1.1 billion today.

Last May, the infamous whale behind the attack unfroze the stolen funds for the first time in three years, moving 550 BTC to 15 separate, new addresses. Then in June, the hacker moved 172 Bitcoin in 24 hours alone, processing five separate transfers to unknown wallets, the biggest of which was worth $640,002.

In February 2019, Bitfinex published a report stating that the US government had managed to retrieve just 27 BTC stolen in the hack.

Last year, the exchange announced that it had implemented a strategy with respect to how it will try to retrieve the stolen funds. According to the whitepaper for its new native platform token,

“The company is working with industry leaders to create a procedure to offer the hacker the chance to safely and privately refund the majority of the stolen funds while keeping a percentage of them as reward for collaborating in finally resolving this issue.”

Meanwhile, crypto developers are improving ways to increase anonymity by obscuring a blockchain’s digital trail. Methods such as “mixers” and “CoinJoins” are designed to make it more difficult for blockchain analysts to track crypto movements for legitimate parties as well as thieves.

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