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

[Quickseller]

The attacker stolen ~119kBTC, the largest mixer that I am aware of, bitmixer.io, can handle no more then 2,500BTC at a time, and some blockchain analytics companies are generally aware of many mixer's bitcoin addresses.

First of all, the attacker would likely not be able to launder all of the stolen BTC through mixers, because if he tried this, he would simply end up with a transaction that is easily linked to the theft. Secondly, if he tried to launder a small amount of the BTC through a mixer, then a blockchain analytics company would be able to figure out with decent certainty where the money "left" the mixer.

There have been some speculative reports that there was heavy futures selling on OkCoin prior to and durring the hack, and that the attacker used his inside prior knowledge of the attack in order to sell the futures market short in order to profit from the decline of price after the hack was disclosed. I am not so sure if this is plausible though because the fact that the amount of bitcoin in multisig addresses were massively dropping was public information, so people that were watching knew that a large hack was likely takingi place, they just might not have known who was getting hacked.

[rekinthis]

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.

well i really doubt it was an inside job because there were examples before that for such stuff you can be punished hard, though i have never heard anything about the way he stole it

[QuestionAuthority]

There are multiple ways to wash Bitcoin and you'll never find them.

By the way, I'm starting a new exchange. Just go to GiveMeAllYourMoneyDumbasses.com

Here's my photo of me and my coonskin hat so you know I'm legit.

[HaXX0R1337]

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?

You have to remember that was not one hacker that stolen those funds, there was more than one group of them,
exploiting the network. I doubt we will see dumping of them this year, they are too famous i think.

[asriloni]

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?

They will never find them because in my opinions they already think about the possibility of that and if they through mixers or not the ending will be same.

[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?

You have to remember that was not one hacker that stolen those funds, there was more than one group of them,
exploiting the network. I doubt we will see dumping of them this year, they are too famous i think.

That is also a likely scenario. A group of them it would be more difficult to track especially if they hit the exchange all at once.
Nothing that was given yet with how they managed to do it still.
So still likely scenario is that it was an inside job as well.

[BTC Loading]

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

I agree with you if the bitcoin is mixed with several mixers the is no how in this world that it will be detected(especially when you mix it little by little amount and send each mixed coin to a different address) 


AFTER THAT YOU CAN  STILL EXCHANGE TO ALT-COIN THEN BACK TO BITCOIN THEN MIX AGAIN AFTER THAT SPEND IT LITTLE BY LITTLE




REMEMBER TO USE A VPN THAT DON'T KEEP TRACE AND DIFFERENT NON BLACKLISTED SOCKS5 BECAUSE BITCOIN SENT CAN BE TRACED TO AN IP ADDRESS

YOU NOW HAVE NO TRACE

HAPPY SPENDING[/color]

[pooya87]

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.

well i really doubt it was an inside job because there were examples before that for such stuff you can be punished hard, though i have never heard anything about the way he stole it

it wouldn't be the first time an inside job happens in the exchanges leading to a hack. but even if it weren't that doesn't change anything about how bad they have performed in case of their own security.

[Katadin]

I think the hacker has already made a lot of money by shorting the bitcoin before the hack news leaked out. So there is no immediate need for him to spend the stolen money now.

[ajaxmoor]

He doesn't really have to run it through mixers. He can just start going through different sites and it will be mixed by themselves.

[Herbert2020]

He doesn't really have to run it through mixers. He can just start going through different sites and it will be mixed by themselves.

any "site" or service out there that is accepting bitcoin as payment can be keeping logs, so you see coins moving out of 1HackersBTCAddress... and check who the other address belong to and go to that "site" and ask them who did this and they will give the information to the authorities.
this is the way they caught kickass owner he was using coinbase and also he was buying stuff from itunes

[amacar2]

He doesn't really have to run it through mixers. He can just start going through different sites and it will be mixed by themselves.

Mixing themselved all 1,00,000BTC+ from where i don't think this is possible. I have seen somewhere actually hacker is trying to agree upon legally owning some % of stolen fund and returning remaining back to bitfinex. If this happen than it will be good for all including price of bitcoin may go up.

[Kprawn]

These Mixer services can be subpoenaed to give up the information, if needed. It all depends on what the law wants to do, and if they want to take it further. As far as I know, nobody has laid a formal

charge at a Police station or given proof that they did? Some people even think, some of these services are honeypots for government agencies. As far as I know, nobody has ever received information

from the company in my signature space, so it's safe to say, they are not one of them.  

[ajaxmoor]

He doesn't really have to run it through mixers. He can just start going through different sites and it will be mixed by themselves.

any "site" or service out there that is accepting bitcoin as payment can be keeping logs, so you see coins moving out of 1HackersBTCAddress... and check who the other address belong to and go to that "site" and ask them who did this and they will give the information to the authorities.
this is the way they caught kickass owner he was using coinbase and also he was buying stuff from itunes

Coinbase is a different case. If the Kickass owner was to use something like Bitmixer, they would probably not have figured it out.

He doesn't really have to run it through mixers. He can just start going through different sites and it will be mixed by themselves.

Mixing themselved all 1,00,000BTC+ from where i don't think this is possible. I have seen somewhere actually hacker is trying to agree upon legally owning some % of stolen fund and returning remaining back to bitfinex. If this happen than it will be good for all including price of bitcoin may go up.

I am not saying he has to mix that much amount of BTC. He can just mix some now, and some later through different mixers or exchanges. You don't have to relate your identity on all sites to withdraw coins.
That was a proposition made by bitfinex, but I doubt he would agree to that in any case.

[zend7]

Once the coins are mixed in a very good service like Bitmixer, Cryptomixer or another mixer in the deep web which I don't recall now chances are small that the exchangers finds out who is the hacker. Mixers are the perfect place when you want to make "money laundering" in the bitcoin cryptocurrency but are also something that helps criminals a lot like the story of hackers or people who are involved with shady things over the dark net. For the moment if someone looks under an address of bitcoin they need a lot of tools to only have a small chance to find out to who this address belongs. Not even law enforcement agencies can help in this case even if they are involved.

[illyiller]

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?

You can't run 120,000 BTC through mixers. There just isn't enough liquidity in the world across all mixers to even begin to launder that amount of bitcoin. Sure, if he wanted to mix 50 or 100 BTC here and there -- and he would probably want to run them through multiple mixers -- he could maybe do that. But he would need to be very, very careful. Several blockchain analysis firms are watching those coins, and once they start moving, clues start being given away.

[marky89]

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.

Bitcoin is not anonymous. It's pseudonymous. While an address is not by definition linked to a human identity, it certainly can be in many ways if a user is not very careful to cover all tracks.

Making your own mixer with that amount of hot coins would just put a target on your back when everyone realizes that you're delivering tainted coins from the Bitfinex heist to your customers.

[Katadin]

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.

Bitcoin is not anonymous. It's pseudonymous. While an address is not by definition linked to a human identity, it certainly can be in many ways if a user is not very careful to cover all tracks.

Making your own mixer with that amount of hot coins would just put a target on your back when everyone realizes that you're delivering tainted coins from the Bitfinex heist to your customers.

So it is better to use a existing big mixing service. But how can you make your coin safe without being identified by the mixer?

[traderbit]

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.

Bitcoin is not anonymous. It's pseudonymous. While an address is not by definition linked to a human identity, it certainly can be in many ways if a user is not very careful to cover all tracks.

Making your own mixer with that amount of hot coins would just put a target on your back when everyone realizes that you're delivering tainted coins from the Bitfinex heist to your customers.

So it is better to use a existing big mixing service. But how can you make your coin safe without being identified by the mixer?

Nowdays there aren't many bitcoin mixer but some that I know are bitcoinfog, bitmixer, cryptomixer and a mixer with .se domain(can't remember now), but how it works are that you send your coins to bitcoinmixer and they send you coins that someone else sent to them, so your coins will go to somewhere else and someone's else coins will go to you minus the mixer fees.

[Kprawn]

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.

Bitcoin is not anonymous. It's pseudonymous. While an address is not by definition linked to a human identity, it certainly can be in many ways if a user is not very careful to cover all tracks.

Making your own mixer with that amount of hot coins would just put a target on your back when everyone realizes that you're delivering tainted coins from the Bitfinex heist to your customers.

So it is better to use a existing big mixing service. But how can you make your coin safe without being identified by the mixer?

The mixer service will not reveal your identity to anyone, if they not forced to do that through legal means. So your coins are safe, if you send it

through these mixers. Even if your coins are clean, it might be mixed with coins that were acquired by illegal means... Nobody knows where their

money came from and how it was used, and this fits with what is happening with fiat money too. Freshly mined coins are the only clean coins.