Bitcoin Forum

Bitfinex has announced it has raised enough funds to reimburse all users affected by last year’s hack in a move Erik Voorhees (ShapreShift CEO) called “fucking amazing.”

Bitfinex caused a stir in August 2016 after hackers stole 120,000 Bitcoins, worth at the time around $70 mln.

Source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitfinex-recapitalization-is-fcking-amazing-voorhees and https://www.bitfinex.com/posts/198

This is impressive indeed. I clearly didn't expect this would happen, or at least not this fast.
Bitfinex will somehow clear its name and will also put Bitcoin in a better light.

That's a very bad news to the entire bitcoin community when such a big hacking took place and one among the  leading investment portal lossing  big, worth around 70billion  made a big panic on the security concerns. This made the trust fall away and now the repaying the users is something good to gain back the trust and move on successfully.

That is good to hear and finally those victims of the hack can now smile again. Hope there will be no technical problems during the refund so all can claim back their refund. The only question left in my head is this, will they refund the amount of satoshi or btc lost or they will refund as per value of bitcoins. If they will refund only as per value of bitcoin then there is something fishy.

even though most users didnt get all their money back I am still very surprised that they even came through.

it certainly beats the gox 'solution' still incredible that they left themselves that wide open.

At that time, I still did not know about that event, however, I heard a few people tell, it is a sad thing for the bitfinex head, which shows that they can not guarantee the protection. Secret all the money, and they have to pay the price. It's a terrible amount of money, the hackers are so ugly, they steal money and use it for themselves. It was also a knife that awakened people to the security of bitcoins, and since then, bitcoins have become safer.

This is good news for those users who are included on the Bitfinex hack and im sure they didnt expect such news that they would be refunded or reimbursed by the site.They are clearing up the bad reputation in the past hacking incident which means they are serious on their business and do still have concern for those people who are affected on that incident.

what??? this is a good news, the exchange is going to reimburse everything bring again trust on crypto, and remove the suggestion that an insider hacked the exchange, like poloniex did with its hack, very nice from bitfinex, i hope they learned their mistake and increased security now

What a great moment, well done Bitfinex to keep a promise like that, very rare and suprising.

That was quick, it is not even a year when it happened and they already recovered the funds that was lost.  I guess there are still those trusting bitfinex and its system even after the breach. I hope they are doing a better job now in protecting their users and investors.

I hope they spend a little bit of that money on fixing the holes, because a second big hack like that will close their doors permanently. It is very

impressive that they basically saved up that money since about August 2, 2016 when it was announced. Their biggest loss is not just the money,

but the trust they lost from the community. I hope this will redeem some of their credit with the users.  ::)

Wow, that really went quick!!
After all it was a lot of money lost!
Imagine how high their profit in a normal year must be, when they do not have the damaged reputation of a theft!
And this is not only good for bitfinex, but for the whole crypto world as well!
It shows that even under difficult circumstances there are honest people in the crypto world!

Congrats to them for enduring and paying back investors a good end to a sad story.
Remembers vircurrex where the exchange dried out and funds were not recovered last I recalled.

This was something that was very profitable for anyone who could see the writing on the wall as far as how quickly they would recover. ;)

the only thing bad about this was the fact that it shows how vulnerable third parties are and also for the millionth time it proved that you don't own bitcoin unless you have the private keys in cold storage in your own possession.

but this news is good since it showed at least they keep their promises.

Its not only  Erik Voorhees (ShapreShift CEO)  that will call it “fucking amazing.” even me myself I cant believe it that they actually came out to say we have raised that amount and we are ready to pay all those who lost their funds, I mean thats another level of integrity at its peak which I am sure will not only speak for bitfinex now but also in the future...

I'm incredibly impressed. 1-of-a-million story where the company actually reimburses their clients instead of disappearing into the night.

They raised those funds really quick which is quite amazing but i will never use them again and i think many have already lost trust in their security measures. There is no point in having any bitcoin stored in their platform which is vulnerable and may get hacked again.

This is impressive to think that its just less than 1 year since the hack. With this move, they are trying so hard to gain trust from the public again. And I hope they have put more security so that this things won't happen to them in the future.

Well good. This is quite unexpected. They better give them back in bitcoins and maybe throw in some extra bits for the hassle they've put people through. The real question now is if this would be enough to bring back people's trust. I mean, it's been hacked before, have they already improved security to make sure it don't happen again?


If they don't then people would only become suspicious and might believe it was an inside job.

It was a mistake and I bet they have learned their lesson well from it.  It is still a great news that brings in a good points to Bitcoin after those hack and scam companies that keep exploiting and using Bitcoin as a tool to trick  people who are new to Bitcoin.

It is really surprising in a short span of time, Bitfinex had accumulated that sum of money and be able to ready the fund for reimbursement of Bitctoin to  the victim without compromising their fund for activities and maintenance. 

this is all nice and dandy,but I would wait untill the users have money back in their wallets
before celebrating or drawing any conclusions
I have seen many offers to sell Bitfinex "debts"-hacked accounts for up to 50% of the total stolen money
so there was no trust and little hope to get the money back,
hope both me and the ones selling were mistaken

Every platform is potentially vulnerable to get hacked and no exchange is safe.  The important thing is to keep all the Bitcoin that you're not using at that exact time well away from the exchange.

What security holes are there to fix when it was an inside job? It's great that people have been compensated in full, but the main point is that they have been compensated according to the value of the coins in USD at the time of the hack. Is it coincidence now the price has nearly doubled in value from the time the "hack" took place, that they have paid back everyone? I don't buy it. 120K BTC at doubled price means that they just need to liquidate 60K BTC to repay all people, and to get rid of every sort of investigation, drama, etc. Easy profit, isn't it?

You do realize that you can track the stolen BTC, and see that it is not commingled with the rest of bitfinex's bitcoin.

Bitfinex also just sold ~$55 million worth of shares of their company at a massive discount. The shares are already trading at 25% above the price they sold them to BFX token holders, and this increased valuation is likely a discount from the valuation prior to the hack.

Their issue was that they effectively had all their bitcoin in their hot wallet due to the BitGo setup. BitGo had actually very recently changed some "features" of the setup so that withdrawal limits could be adjusted to anything (>21 million BTC/day) without any secondary confirmation. They have since moved back to a traditional hot/cold wallet setup and currently have (https://blockchain.info/address/3D2oetdNuZUqQHPJmcMDDHYoqkyNVsFk9r) roughly 133k BTC in their cold wallet.

This is great for the users who lose lots of money this is also a way to bring back their trust to the site itself. After that big hack that took i think 70 billion. Hope they've upgrade their security and patch bugs quickly before an attacker took advantage to it.

Yes, I was expecting them to close down in the next 2 years after the hack. This latest development has made them one of the most trustworthy Bitcoin exchanges now as far as the owners of Bitfinex are concerned.

This is definitely good news for those who have accounts with bitfinex, and I hope everybody learned their lessons from that hacking incident last year.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I am aware of, there is a low number of coins that you can track, which on its own doesn't mean anything. In case everyone is indeed able to follow the nearly 120K BTC, which at this point renders these coins pretty much worthless since they are 'marked' - I wouldn't even be surprised that at some point (now the debt has been fully paid off) the "hacker" miraculously returns the coins to Bitfinex, where Bitfinex basically can do anything with these coins from there. Don't you yourself think everything around the "hack" was/is more or less shady?

In case you can follow/track the 120K BTC, would you mind sharing the addresses in which they are sitting?