How can exchanges find out Bitfinex funds if "hacker" runs them throught mixers?

[pereira4]

If a mixer receives coins that are from a known theft, as far as I know they remain neutral to the whole thing and limit themselves to do their job (mix the coins). There are certain sites like Helix that as far as I know are fully automatized, run on a onion tor website and deliver clean coins, after that I would say it's impossible to find, so he would proceed to sell in exchanges. Of course if he isn't a total idiot, he will not dump and will sell slowly so he doesn't get caught.

So in this situation... how can they find them? I wish they find them and people can recover funds but what if he runs coins through mixers?

[LordCoder]

Considering that he was able to obtain the coins that way, I highly doubt he fails on the exchanging process. The only thing that thieves may fail at is the last process: keep your coins stored without the ambition of exchanging them quickly.

[MingLee]

If a mixer receives coins that are from a known theft, as far as I know they remain neutral to the whole thing and limit themselves to do their job (mix the coins). There are certain sites like Helix that as far as I know are fully automatized, run on a onion tor website and deliver clean coins, after that I would say it's impossible to find, so he would proceed to sell in exchanges. Of course if he isn't a total idiot, he will not dump and will sell slowly so he doesn't get caught.

So in this situation... how can they find them? I wish they find them and people can recover funds but what if he runs coins through mixers?

If they get run through mixers, it does help to change up some of the ways you can trace the coins and it makes it considerably more difficult to determine which address holds the funds, but you could probably still find them if you really wanted to track the person down. You just have to spend a lot of time checking each address and seeing if any sync up to moves from the original wallet.

[Katadin]

If you run through the mixers several times or with several mixers, it is not possible to find out the trace.

[Lucius]

I think that stolen BTC from Bitfinex is lost forever for them.The thief knew what he doing then and surely now will not make a rookie mistake to give them possibility to return funds.It's too late for anything else but to try to prevent things like this in the future.

[topiOleg]

But I think the deposited coins to the mixer going to be delivered to another mixer user later, at least it is the way most coin mixers work. So if you cannot recover these coins from coin mixer anymore, why not send them to some address, wait longer, and then you could use the coins as everybody expect the coins come from the mixer to somebody else? Or you believe if you use the coin mixer in the future and you end unlucky with these coins, you going to be investigated ?

[hiddensphinx]

[razor5cl]

But I think the deposited coins to the mixer going to be delivered to another mixer user later, at least it is the way most coin mixers work. So if you cannot recover these coins from coin mixer anymore, why not send them to some address, wait longer, and then you could use the coins as everybody expect the coins come from the mixer to somebody else?

This isn't how it works. If they just keep the coins and then spend them without mixing etcetera then they will be traceable. It's not a question of what people "expect." If they are mixed correctly and at a mixer who co-operates and doesn't sell them out, then no one will be able to follow where those coins end up. You can't just not be secure because "people won't expect it." I won't leave the front door to my house unlocked because people will expect it to be locked, do I? That's security through obscurity which is a poor ideal to follow.

[Jeremycoin]

It's hard to do that, considering that Bitcoin is anonymous. And I think that they won't use that kind of public service, they will probably make their own mixer and use it by their own.

[SmartIphone]

If a mixer receives coins that are from a known theft, as far as I know they remain neutral to the whole thing and limit themselves to do their job (mix the coins). There are certain sites like Helix that as far as I know are fully automatized, run on a onion tor website and deliver clean coins, after that I would say it's impossible to find, so he would proceed to sell in exchanges. Of course if he isn't a total idiot, he will not dump and will sell slowly so he doesn't get caught.

So in this situation... how can they find them? I wish they find them and people can recover funds but what if he runs coins through mixers?

Until now I haven't seen any news that an exchange has found stolen bitcoins when a user deposited on their exchange addresses, so I don't have any idea how would they find bitfinex stolen bitcoin, maybe after a while they can find but the hacker can exchange and withdraw them in less than a minute!!

[BTCLovingDude]

If a mixer receives coins that are from a known theft, as far as I know they remain neutral to the whole thing and limit themselves to do their job (mix the coins). There are certain sites like Helix that as far as I know are fully automatized, run on a onion tor website and deliver clean coins, after that I would say it's impossible to find, so he would proceed to sell in exchanges. Of course if he isn't a total idiot, he will not dump and will sell slowly so he doesn't get caught.

So in this situation... how can they find them? I wish they find them and people can recover funds but what if he runs coins through mixers?

Until now I haven't seen any news that an exchange has found stolen bitcoins when a user deposited on their exchange addresses, so I don't have any idea how would they find bitfinex stolen bitcoin, maybe after a while they can find but the hacker can exchange and withdraw them in less than a minute!!

they can tag the known addresses with dirty bitcoin on them in their code (it is a simple process) and so if they receive any funds from those knows addresses the exchange blocks the account immediately.

but the question here is about using a mixer, and i think if it is used in smaller amounts and used correctly then it can be possible to become untraceable.

[magemist]

If a mixer receives coins that are from a known theft, as far as I know they remain neutral to the whole thing and limit themselves to do their job (mix the coins). There are certain sites like Helix that as far as I know are fully automatized, run on a onion tor website and deliver clean coins, after that I would say it's impossible to find, so he would proceed to sell in exchanges. Of course if he isn't a total idiot, he will not dump and will sell slowly so he doesn't get caught.

So in this situation... how can they find them? I wish they find them and people can recover funds but what if he runs coins through mixers?

Until now I haven't seen any news that an exchange has found stolen bitcoins when a user deposited on their exchange addresses, so I don't have any idea how would they find bitfinex stolen bitcoin, maybe after a while they can find but the hacker can exchange and withdraw them in less than a minute!!

That is impossible to trace funds from someone using a mixer service. That is what their entire business is built around on. It is next to none to find out where those bitfinex funds are now.

[data1]

hacker was not a newbie he will not do childish mistakes but we can not losse all the hope we should do till we lost him

[CoinBreader]

Well agree he can put them thru mixers several times, split the amount to smallers pieces & start spending ,liquidating ,slowly & with out any trace,i dont believe finex will manage to get him/find him

[calkob]

is bitfinix bust then i hadnt heard if they are actually gona get people their funds back?

[SmartIphone]

If a mixer receives coins that are from a known theft, as far as I know they remain neutral to the whole thing and limit themselves to do their job (mix the coins). There are certain sites like Helix that as far as I know are fully automatized, run on a onion tor website and deliver clean coins, after that I would say it's impossible to find, so he would proceed to sell in exchanges. Of course if he isn't a total idiot, he will not dump and will sell slowly so he doesn't get caught.

So in this situation... how can they find them? I wish they find them and people can recover funds but what if he runs coins through mixers?

Until now I haven't seen any news that an exchange has found stolen bitcoins when a user deposited on their exchange addresses, so I don't have any idea how would they find bitfinex stolen bitcoin, maybe after a while they can find but the hacker can exchange and withdraw them in less than a minute!!

they can tag the known addresses with dirty bitcoin on them in their code (it is a simple process) and so if they receive any funds from those knows addresses the exchange blocks the account immediately.

but the question here is about using a mixer, and i think if it is used in smaller amounts and used correctly then it can be possible to become untraceable.

Then let's imagine this scenario: If a hacker transfer the funds from A to B and then send from B to exchange address(C) then the exchange will not be able detect that the funds are from those stolen?
I'm not sure how they can detect but if it is only for direct payments from dirty addresses marked as to known dirty address then this is not secure to find the hackers.

[magemist]

hacker was not a newbie he will not do childish mistakes but we can not losse all the hope we should do till we lost him

This is very true. As childish minds make foolish mistakes. 
This hacker was skilled in his craft and was a veteran with knowing how the system works and what were their flaws. If he was a child/newbie he would of left bread crumbs at the scene of the crime and they would of caught him by now with making such stupid errors.

[bjman]

I think that using a 'trusted' mixer is key. However, no mixer gives you 'clean' coins. It just gives you a different type of 'tainted' coins. Afterall, most coins a mixer has will be tainted coins to some extent.

[GamingOn]

That's an insane amount of coins to mix, and as others have said you simply receive coins that were tainted in a different way. I've got a genius way to mix coins, how about starting a 1k BTC give away and seeing how many idiots show up and then just issue the reward to myself and so I have plausible deniability where that 1k BTC came from?

Oh wait...

[topiOleg]

This hacker was skilled in his craft and was a veteran with knowing how the system works and what were their flaws.

Did bitfinex even published what flaws were exploited to stole so many Bitcoins ? There had to be a way to get the Bitfinex private key/s. If not, inside job is possible instead.