Cyber thieves move $760 million stolen in the 2016 Bitfinex heist

Over $760 million worth of Bitcoin that were stolen from cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex in 2016 were moved to new accounts.

More than $760 million worth of Bitcoin, stolen from Asian cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex in 2016, were moved on Wednesday to new accounts.

On August 2016, the Asian Bitfinex suffered a security breach that resulted in the theft of 120,000 Bitcoin, the incident had serious repercussions on the Bitcoin value that significantly dropped after the security breach (-20% decrease).

The investigation launched by the Bitfinex exchange along with law enforcement allowed to determine that 119,756 Bitcoin (roughly $72 million in value before the hack) have been stolen from customers’ wallets.

The funds were transferred through tens of transactions ranging from 1 to as much as 1,200 bitcoin (BTC) at a time.

Experts from The Record, published a summary of recent transactions related to the movements from wallets used by the attackers in the 2016 cyberheist. The sum transferred by the crooks ranges from 10057.5798 BTC (per Whale Alert) to 12230.08861 BTC (per BTCParsers).

⚠ ⚠ ⚠ ⚠ ⚠ ⚠ ⚠ 1,241.37 #BTC (78,246,494 USD) of stolen funds transferred from Bitfinex Hack 2016 to unknown wallethttps://t.co/yLsJDXUBvE

— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) April 14, 2021

At the time of the hack, other exchanges blocked any transactions involving the attackers’ addresses to prevent the crooks from cashing out the stolen Bitcoin.

The current value of the overall stolen Bitcoin is around $7.45 billion, and hackers moved $760 million (around 10%). Many cryptocurrency experts believe that the threat actors behind the hack will not be able to cash out them. Anyway, some analysts speculate that threat actors could move large amounts of funds in the attempt of influencing the Bitcoin-USD exchange rate as explained by Adam Cochran.

The 2016 Bitfinex hack BTC are some of the most tracked & blacklisted funds in the world. No exchange will process them. They can basically never be cashed out.

This isnt the first time that the whale has moved them during a market rally to cause panic and likely cash in a short https://t.co/kMFkydgwCo

— Adam Cochran (adamscochran.eth) (@adamscochran) April 14, 2021

“The hackers’ plan appears to have been successful. The Bitcoin-USD exchange rate fell from $64k to around $62k last night after hackers moved $760 million.” reported The Record.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, bitcoin)

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