Bitfinex hackers move another $30million

[Jet Cash]

Coin Telegraph reports that the hackers who stole 120,000 BTC back in 2016 have just moved another $30million of Bitcoin into unknown wallets. This follows a number of other transactions executed earlier this year. Read the full report here -
https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitfinex-hackers-move-another-30m-in-stolen-bitcoin-from-2016

It would apper that they are managing to realise some of the profits from this hack. This is despite the public records of all Bitcoin transactions. Do you think that they will eventually be able to realise all of the stolen gains? There is a substantial reward for anyone who aids in the recovery of these funds, but nobody seems to be able to trace the perpetrators.

[claire_lovely]

I think that they could transfer it quite easily without being traced. By using unknown wallets and mixers it would be very difficult to locate the funds, and even then it would be hard to tell who owned it, much would likely eventually be mixed with real transactions to.

They could also swap it for XMR and then back to BTC, making any detection virtually impossible.

[ropyu1978]

Still waiting the impact of stolen fund bitcoin and have ad news or keep positive news to make bitcoin stable on higher price or not, last night bitcoin grow up more than 6% and give space for almost altcoin going to higher price, if this bad news will make bitcoin going back down or lower price asbsolutely will make altcoin going down too, I hope this not give bad impact for bitcoin and altcoin after several week have going down and break out on first week in October to get chance see bitcoin in higher price at the end this year.

[dothebeats]

120,000 bitcoins is no joke, though at present it'll be hard for them to liquidate those and harvest some profits. I'm surprised that most on-chain analysis firms are still not onto this and are not finding the leads as they should be for such huge cases. Though of course there is a possibility that at some point, these coins are no longer in the hands of the hackers and has since been mixed in exchanges' hot wallets and some of the funds are already in the form of privacy coins or other altcoins. I would be keen to see some developments on this case, and see how would they nab the hackers from 2016.

[malevolent]

Two arrests have been made last year in connection with this hack?

https://www.zdnet.com/article/bitfinex-hackers-arrested-after-three-years/

Anyone know what came of it?

If they only managed to launder a small fraction so far, I'm not sure how much are they going to be able to wash without getting caught.

[20kevin20]

It would apper that they are managing to realise some of the profits from this hack. This is despite the public records of all Bitcoin transactions. Do you think that they will eventually be able to realise all of the stolen gains? There is a substantial reward for anyone who aids in the recovery of these funds, but nobody seems to be able to trace the perpetrators.

It's getting easier and easier to realise them with the development of P2P platforms, mixers, whirlpools and other ways we currently have to anonymize Bitcoins. Unless they expose themselves one way or another, I think they'll eventually get away with the stolen gains unfortunately.

Two arrests have been made last year in connection with this hack?

Anyone know what came of it?

The brothers may be part of a larger ring or they just weren't the right persons to suspect. Unless someone from Israel gets to verify if there's any public record of the two, I can't seem to find any information besides assumptions. This is what Blocksat says about their arrest:

Over a year ago, the media reported that the Israeli services arrested two brothers – Eli Gigi and Assaf Gigiwho were accused, incl. for the attack on Bifinex in 2016. They also had numerous phishing attacks or other activities in their “CV” that helped them steal millions of dollars in BTC over the last years. They mainly consisted in impersonating known exchanges.

Now we can become suspicious that the brothers were not behind the attack. Or they had accomplices who are still at large.

[Fundamentals Of]

Do you think that they will eventually be able to realise all of the stolen gains?

I think a little portion of the funds hacked was already recovered. But it was too little as compared to the total amount stolen. The hackers look brilliant in holding for a while and refrained from being to rush in moving their coins. Although it also gave the authorities some buying time, it seems they are far from making progress in trying to recover the funds.

We will hope the juicy reward provided for the bounty hunters who will help recover the funds will really help.

[(o)(o)ilikeboobs(o)(o)]

I do not understand very well about the return of money that the hacker stole. Can they recover the bitcoins they have stolen? The likelihood is very low, maybe the hackers are playing a certain game.
120,000 Bitcoins is a lot of money and can drag bitcoin down.

[UserU]

I do not understand very well about the return of money that the hacker stole. Can they recover the bitcoins they have stolen? The likelihood is very low, maybe the hackers are playing a certain game.
120,000 Bitcoins is a lot of money and can drag bitcoin down.

Unlike fiat money, Bitcoin transactions are much harder to trace if they're not conducted to KYC-ed platforms. Then there are mixers that obscure the tracks.

[mk4]

120,000 Bitcoins is a lot of money and can drag bitcoin down.

Sure, but this is assuming that they could(and would) actually dump everything in one go. Because if they were smart, that's definitely not the best way to dump that huge of an amount.

[sheenshane]

120,000 Bitcoins is a lot of money and can drag bitcoin down.

Sure, but this is assuming that they could(and would) actually dump everything in one go. Because if they were smart, that's definitely not the best way to dump that huge of an amount.

I tend to agree, they will not surely dump the whole thing in a single transaction. As of now, I haven't seen any sign of a price decrease in the market.

IMO, in appearance, this is how Bitcoins and fiat differ because fiat has serial number compare with Bitcoins that makes it really hard to track the stolen Bitcoins in the market in fac that we couldn't identify if the one that we hodl already came from the stolen Bitcoins after they will keep moving scammed Bitcoin into small parts.

Although fiat has a serial number it only serves for monitoring it couldn't help the authority to trace stolen money for it is still being generated by the central bank and can be transferred from one to another without knowing the serial numbers of money that you own.
Hackers or thief have their own ways as well to protect what they stole and IMO, it will be really hard to recover the $30 million for hackers will not be able to do it if they don't know what to do next and how can they remain anonymous to those who chase them, of course, the Chainalysis, a Blockchain Analysis Company that monitor stolen Bitcoin transaction.

[coupable]

According to reports, this is not the first move made this year 2020. Hackers already moved another amount last July.
What we are sure about is that the receiving addresses don't belong to any of the known exchanges. But there is still a possibility that those addresses belong to a mixer who send back the same amount to several other addresses owned by the hacker.
About the arrests occured in Israel, with the lack of further details, it seems that it lead to nothing as they fail to recover the stolen funds or to trace other people involved in the operation .

[Oilacris]

It would apper that they are managing to realise some of the profits from this hack. This is despite the public records of all Bitcoin transactions. Do you think that they will eventually be able to realise all of the stolen gains? There is a substantial reward for anyone who aids in the recovery of these funds, but nobody seems to be able to trace the perpetrators.

I would believe that its possible but only for those centralized alts but for Bitcoin? I dont see a chance for some recovery or tracing them up.

Just for the example on what happened in Kucoin when it comes to recovery or able to hold up those coins but we know that this isnt possible for BTC.

The thing we can only do is to see those coins moving and its been a while since that Bitfinex hack and now they are trying to harvest gains.
It sucks but theres nothing we can do.

[batang_bitcoin]

I do not understand very well about the return of money that the hacker stole. Can they recover the bitcoins they have stolen? The likelihood is very low, maybe the hackers are playing a certain game.
120,000 Bitcoins is a lot of money and can drag bitcoin down.

What do you mean by dragging bitcoin down? the entire market will be dragged down? if it will be dumped all at once, yes. But it doesn't mean that it won't recover quickly. We have seen how fast it dumps and recovers. Stolen bitcoins are unlikely to recover because their strat is to let it pass for years so that people won't notice the movement and transfer of those stolen funds. But little did they know, there are correspondents that are monitoring those funds from time to time and didn't stopped for years. So what we see with the reports are fund transfers but not actual tracing.

[AmoreJaz]

I do not understand very well about the return of money that the hacker stole. Can they recover the bitcoins they have stolen? The likelihood is very low, maybe the hackers are playing a certain game.
120,000 Bitcoins is a lot of money and can drag bitcoin down.

What do you mean by dragging bitcoin down? the entire market will be dragged down? if it will be dumped all at once, yes. But it doesn't mean that it won't recover quickly. We have seen how fast it dumps and recovers. Stolen bitcoins are unlikely to recover because their strat is to let it pass for years so that people won't notice the movement and transfer of those stolen funds. But little did they know, there are correspondents that are monitoring those funds from time to time and didn't stopped for years. So what we see with the reports are fund transfers but not actual tracing.

and dumping them at once will not be a smart move from their end. so what they are doing is they are slowly liquidating those stolen bitcoins. definitely, they will be employing mixers or converting it to other alts like xmr. people can see there's movement but i dont think these hackers will be dumb to let those txs be traced where it will end up with.
based from the article, these hackers already moved about 8600BTCs this year alone, and yet they haven't caught them. they already know the drill, so getting caught after all this time? dont think it will happen.

so seems that no one can claim the $400M rewards from bitfinex, for now -
https://news.bitcoin.com/bitfinex-400-million-rewards-get-back-120000-stolen-bitcoins/

120,000 bitcoins is no joke, though at present it'll be hard for them to liquidate those and harvest some profits. I'm surprised that most on-chain analysis firms are still not onto this and are not finding the leads as they should be for such huge cases. Though of course there is a possibility that at some point, these coins are no longer in the hands of the hackers and has since been mixed in exchanges' hot wallets and some of the funds are already in the form of privacy coins or other altcoins. I would be keen to see some developments on this case, and see how would they nab the hackers from 2016.

or maybe they have leads already but of course, not disclosing to public consumption. really interesting if they can ever bust those hackers.

[Rengga Jati]

It means that the hackers also do it carefully, splitting the BTC into several times movement to ignore the big possibilities to be discovered. And probably, they also seek the right moment, when the price is rising up at a certain time. And of course, they should make it as real and fluent as possible or they will be discovered and arrested.
But, can what they do give impact tot he price of BTC right now or in the future? I am not sure that they wnat to dump the price, but, who knows if they have that such high amount of BTC.

Two arrests have been made last year in connection with this hack?

We still can't confirm it yet. But, if it is from Bitfinex, they are probably in one relation. But, who knows that they are in the same gang of hackers. they must know the risks if they spend more BTC at one time or in a short time. So, they will manage to move the BTC very carefully. About two arrested, hopefully, they are, the one that has the key of the stolen BTC.

I remember about a hacker in my country that has been arrested after some years being hackers and discovered.
He lived so peacefully being a rich man, and it ends after the police arrest him.

it means that if hackers do some accidental or careless things about moving the BTC carelessly, the risks will be higher to be known hackers and arrested. 

[Darker45]

Two arrests have been made last year in connection with this hack?

We still can't confirm it yet. But, if it is from Bitfinex, they are probably in one relation. But, who knows that they are in the same gang of hackers. they must know the risks if they spend more BTC at one time or in a short time. So, they will manage to move the BTC very carefully. About two arrested, hopefully, they are, the one that has the key of the stolen BTC.

It has already been confirmed. This is old news actually. The arrests happened in June last year.

Accordingly, the two were brothers from Israel. Their names were Eli Gigi and Assaf Gigi. The two were notorious online criminals, having also been charged of "orchestrating various phishing schemes."^[1]

Eli Gigi, in particular, is the kind of man who can pull this off, having been trained under the Talpiot Program of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), a military program to train cyber-security experts.^[Ibid.]

I was therefore a little bit hopeful that there might be some significant developments in the recovery of the stolen funds but it seems the recent movement of the funds makes it clear that the companions of the two arrested are still in full control of everything.

[1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/bitfinex-hackers-arrested-after-three-years/
https://www.coindesk.com/two-israeli-brothers-arrested-for-phishing-fraud-bitfinex-hack
https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitfinex-hack-new-twist-two-arrested-in-israel-after-15m-moved

[(o)(o)ilikeboobs(o)(o)]

120,000 Bitcoins is a lot of money and can drag bitcoin down.

Sure, but this is assuming that they could(and would) actually dump everything in one go. Because if they were smart, that's definitely not the best way to dump that huge of an amount.

What if they have a conspiracy? Dumping them all together with a few big enough short trades can get them bigger than that. Next, he collects the crumbling and rich battlefield no matter how much the others have sold.
In 2017 there was a similar situation when someone pulled Ethereum down to $ 0.1.

[BrewMaster]

120,000 Bitcoins is a lot of money and can drag bitcoin down.

Sure, but this is assuming that they could(and would) actually dump everything in one go. Because if they were smart, that's definitely not the best way to dump that huge of an amount.

What if they have a conspiracy? Dumping them all together with a few big enough short trades can get them bigger than that. Next, he collects the crumbling and rich battlefield no matter how much the others have sold.
In 2017 there was a similar situation when someone pulled Ethereum down to $ 0.1.

first of all there is no similarity in the case of ethereum in 2017 and bitcoin of any times. secondly it mainly got dumped that much becaue there was not enough buyers buying ethereum to prevent that crash so a big sell off pulled it down. there was also another case which was the exchange bug where the price got dumped that low which wasn't even any sells taking place!!!

secondly as soon as a single satoshi of these coins reach a centralized exchange it will be frozen and won't even be possible to login to that account again let alone want to sell.

[JakobFugger]

The real news is to know that they still have access to the wallet. This is the most worrying. Trying to understand what strategies they could use is a curiosity I have. What would be the next steps? The main thing is to use it in a way that doesn't bring connections, so they can't buy anything directly. Would they probably use a mixer or an exchange?

I found this post here offering the reward.
https://www.bitfinex.com/posts/494
 I believe it could be a good opportunity to earn some money to plan their next steps and anticipate how to find out who they are or any leads.