Bitcoin Forum

The FBI Gets Involved In US$1.3m Bitfinex Hack Investigation

It was only a matter of time until Bitfinex would get into legal trouble over their recent hack. One user in Massachusetts has filed a police report to recover his missing bitcoin funds. During the hack, nearly US$70m worth of Bitcoin were stolen, and no users were compensated. Instead, they all saw their balances punished even further to make up for the balance sheet losses.

The way Bitfinex handled the whole hacking event was not exactly professional, from a legal point of view. The company cut all user balances by a significant...

http://www.newsbtc.com/2016/10/15/fbi-gets-involved-us1-3m-bitfinex-hack-investigation/

I really hope the FBI digs deep enough into Bitfinex that they find the real truth of what happened during the "hack" that has cost people many millions. When coins are stolen, you would expect an exchange to make certain important details public, and hand out a reward for people being able to trace these coins with as result that they come back. Right now they only put up a reward for people without any useful information.... One big joke.

Things are really going to get messy for Bitfinex, they may end up having to close shop if they have to pay up debts at once.

They need to find an investor fast and try to redeem their tokens.
Only then will their troubles be solved.

Bitfinex has suffered irreparable damage due to the hack drama. It's a marked exchange right now. I don't think Bitfinex will ever come close to 50% of what it once was. Smart people avoid that exchange. At least, I would if I was a trader there, or maybe someone looking to join an exchange.

Since when did any aspect of the Bitfinex organisation operate from US soil? Not trying to defend Bitfinex as such, but defending Hong Kong sovereign territory from the FBI sure sounds like the right thing to do. Is the Massachusetts FBI office going to be the ones investigating, lol

What type of fucking freak leaves $3 million on a piece of shit exchange like that in a far off land with no accountability? My mind boggles.

These people are called whales. You should know that by now. Some people trade with a few thousand worth of fiat, and the other does it with a few million. And why on an exchange as Bitfinex? Before the hack it was the best option for people looking to trade BTC/USD. Now it's the worst option.

All other exchanges had better sit up and not let the same thing happen to them.

These people are called STUPID FUCKING WHALES.

Having a pile of money doesn't confer intelligence or experience. People trading on BFX after their network outage were idiots, and after the hack, completely retarded. Much like Gox, there were warning signs that were ignored.

I don't feel sorry at all for any "whale" that lost anything. BFX will get what they deserve in the long run, including their ill-run business getting shut down.

Maybe a lot of Americans have complained about the losses incurred. I am not sure how the FBI is going to proceed.
All they may do is share notes with the HK cops.

To quote Jack from The Importance of Being Earnest  
I couldn't agree more with the above.

Never leave your bitcoins on third party websites...it's that simple.

Who's to say that this user wasn't an early adopter? After all, I assume newer adopters would be smart enough to be careful with their money. $3,000,000 is about 4777 BTC at current prices, so maybe this person mined early on, or bought some? (Though, even at 20 cents, it's still almost $1000.)

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Perhaps it was someone who was excited for the development of bitcoin a couple years ago, who'd invested some money into it but wasn't smart enough to protect their funds.

but storing $3 million in a exchange is just a terrible idea even for a whale and i am glad that the investigation has been done by the FBI and i guess they will catch the bloody theaves and i do hope someone from the bitfinex gets dragged along . i have my suspicion in all the major hacks happened that they may be inside help in all of them.

It might have been the best option for liquidity, but certainly not the best for transparency and reliability, let alone accountability.

Anyone with a reasonably operative mind must have known perfectly well that something like this was a very strong possibility. No regulation, murky ownership, murky location, murky jurisdictions.

It's not a site that I ever felt tempted to place any trust in as soon as I looked into how it's run.

Is this the first time they get involved in exchanges hacks or they were involved also in the past, Mt.gox? Or on chinese exchanges??

Not that he deserved to get fucked like that, I fully agree with this statement. 3 fucking million dollars, christ almighty. Some people are just stupid with money it baffles me.

Exactly.  If you do, they are not "your bitcoins" - they belong to someone else and you just have an IOU.  Which isn't worth much.