Remember Bitfinex Exchange Hack of 2016 ? The stolen bitcoins are moving!

[TheNineClub]

I guess he can go with the tried and true method when stealing a lot of sum, and that is just sitting on it for a period of 10 years or so until everything quiets down. Obviously, there is little to no chance that he will cash out all at once. He still has options of taking the money out little by little with ATM withdrawls, some smaller amounts thrown into mixers, and buying things with crypto. I know that's not the luxurious way to spend your hard hacked money, but serious thieves don't really really on that stolen money that much so there is no need to take it out at once and splurge it in one place. Also, I wouldn't be surprised if the individual (or a group) at hand has some access or connection to the underworld, and I am sure that there are individuals that would accept some amounts of BTC in exchange for actual money, it's basically just money laundering. Also, I can imagine some of it can be invested into other coins and withdrawn through that avenue. So the slow approach has options.

[DapanasFruit]

I think the saddest part of this whole hacking story is that transactions can easily be traced and movements of Bitcoin from one wallet to another can be ascertained but there is nothing so far that can be done to get back the assets stolen. And that can mean a very big encouragement to other hackers to do everything possible and to even invest in more sophisticated tools and means to become successful in wreaking havoc in many big centralized exchanges...because the money is really in there...millions of money. This is one big reason why DEXs are getting more popular though nothing is really totally safe as long as we have extremely talented and creative hackers around.

[gantez]

I think the saddest part of this whole hacking story is that transactions can easily be traced and movements of Bitcoin from one wallet to another can be ascertained but there is nothing so far that can be done to get back the assets stolen. And that can mean a very big encouragement to other hackers to do everything possible and to even invest in more sophisticated tools and means to become successful in wreaking havoc in many big centralized exchanges...because the money is really in there...millions of money. This is one big reason why DEXs are getting more popular though nothing is really totally safe as long as we have extremely talented and creative hackers around.

It is difficult to avoid using centralised exchange sometimes you find some service you like there like staking for example that exchange like binance do. The best is being careful and not allow coins to stay in exchange for a longer time than it is required maybe we can escape the time hacking will happen .

[Obito]

People who steal things or get them through bad ways will never really enjoy the "fruits" of their labor. Karma has a funny way of striking back and biting their a**, so the joke is on them, time will tell.

Sad thing is these kinds of people are the ones that don't really get the karma that they deserve. I mean look at historic records, there's not a lot of deplorable and evil people that have been served their just desserts so I don't think that karma will ever be of concern for this type of people.

[SFR10]

and at the same time the person who stole might also try and encash illegally which does mean that the price might went down because that's a really high amount.

Considering that we're dealing with a significant amount, it's safe to say that the hacker in question, will surely have a hard time ^{[even illegaly]} exchanging them in one go.

He still has options of taking the money out little by little with ATM withdrawals,

You shouldn't even consider that as an option for someone that's trying to stay under the radar ^{[e.g. cameras, KYC, fingerprints and etc...]}.

and buying things with crypto.

That could go wrong on so many levels...

[Leviathan.007]

I clearly remember that date and I even remember some people were saying he won't move the coins because he is maybe scared to be tracked and scared of possible transaction traces I actually was believing like that because moving a huge amount of bitcoin can alert anyone even if the bitcoins are not stolen and if you consider the coins are stolen you can double the risk of foe the hacker, however, if you really could hack Bitfinex and take control over these coins he probably knows how to do not get caught while using the coins, surly the other possibly for him is to selling the wallet because there are some people in darknet they buy stone coins for cheaper prices because they know how to spend and use the coins anonymously.

[suzanne5223]

This is well-known within the crypto forum and people that follow the news. However, there is some Bitcoin tumbler group where people exchange dirty coins for clean coins.

You don't even need to join groups, mixers/tumblers are available to use today — and some(like ChipMixer) even has an onion address, for those who value their privacy. The question is just that if the anonymity can be broken or not.

Relevant thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5117328.0

I understand the quality of service provided by the above tumbler you mentioned and the relevant thread you provided explain my impression here "though a mixing service/a mixing algorithm might seem to be reliable at the moment, through a single leak/implementation fault, an attacker could be able to deanonymize any past transaction which has been processed by the mixing services."
This is the reason why I thought making use of various tumbler and privacy methods will be better if privacy is the top priority. Besides, Theymos always once advise the use of two or more anonymity services.

[franky1]

seems the coin movements are related to authorities finding the thieves and seizing the coins

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-60310783

Stolen Bitcoin worth more than $5bn (£3.7bn) has been seized by the US Department of Justice - the largest ever confiscation of its kind.

Officials also arrested and charged two people on Tuesday with attempting to launder the money, which amounts to nearly 120,000 Bitcoin.

The funds, stolen by a hacker who breached a cryptocurrency exchange in 2016, were valued at about $71m.

But, with the rise in Bitcoin's value, it is now valued at more than $5bn.

Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Polite Jr said the seizure was proof the government "will not allow cryptocurrency to be a safe haven for money laundering or a zone of lawlessness within our financial system".

The money originates from the 2016 hack of a crypto exchange known as Bitfinex.

According to Justice Department officials, a hacker breached the platform, made more than 2,000 unauthorised transactions and then funnelled the money into a digital wallet allegedly run by Ilya Lichtenstein, 34, of New York.

A criminal complaint alleges Lichtenstein and his wife, Heather Morgan, 31, laundered about 25,000 of the stolen Bitcoin through various accounts over the past five years and used various methods to cover their tracks, from fake identities to converting their Bitcoin into other digital currencies.

Investigators from Washington DC, New York, Chicago and Ansbach, Germany collaborated on the lengthy probe.

In a statement, Bitfinex said it had cooperated with the inquiry and was "pleased" the stolen funds had been recovered.

Lichtenstein and Morgan will appear before a federal judge later on Tuesday, on counts of conspiracy to defraud the US and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

If found guilty, they could each serve up to 25 years in prison.

The asset seizure comes four months after the launch of a National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team at the Justice Department.

In what is believed to be its previous largest financial seizure, the team seized some $2.3m in cryptocurrency last year, recovering the ransom paid by the Colonial Pipeline company to end a crippling cyberattack.

[TopT3ns]

Where ever fund moving this wallet have detected by all exchange market and when this fund arriving on exchange account for depositing will get lock or account get trouble for withdrawing later. Still fund hacked from bitfinex not moving to other exchange just hold on hard ware wallet, the hacker not really brave moving his fund have announcement by Bitfinex team will banned and looking this hacker with bounty amount $400k. I think after last weeks with this issues not any impact with bitcoin and altcoin price keep stable pump because they can't move fund from wallet to exchange account for selling.

[SFR10]

seems the coin movements are related to authorities finding the thieves and seizing the coins

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-60310783

I cross-checked various sources and it appears that when they moved those coins ^{[on Feb 1]}, they were still on the loose...

• Heather "tweeted" on Feb, 6 ^{[that would've not been the case if she had already been taken into custody]}.

After scrolling through the following "detailed document", I'm quite surprised that someone who's smart enough to hack those, is also dumb enough to store the private keys on a cloud storage account ^{[it's quite strange]}!

[Anonylz]

Well according to news on Coindesk two individuals were arrested who conspired to hack the exchange, they are married couples (quite surprising), they are expected to "appear in court at 3:00 p.m. ET in New York, according to a U.S. Department of Justice"
Am shocked this two are not aware the wallets are under strict monitoring by the security agents, after hiding for a few years, now they will face the full weight of the law.

[ChiBitCTy]

I remember downloading the app for this exchange back in 2016, I believe it was to be able to buy some IOTA lol. I couldn’t even get the app to work so I didn’t end up putting any bitcoins on the exchange and thank god I didn’t. As we now know these funds were taken back over by this FBI, hopefully some of those who lost their funds are finally made whole.

[perfect999]

Where ever fund moving this wallet have detected by all exchange market and when this fund arriving on exchange account for depositing will get lock or account get trouble for withdrawing later. Still fund hacked from bitfinex not moving to other exchange just hold on hard ware wallet, the hacker not really brave moving his fund have announcement by Bitfinex team will banned and looking this hacker with bounty amount $400k. I think after last weeks with this issues not any impact with bitcoin and altcoin price keep stable pump because they can't move fund from wallet to exchange account for selling.

If I were the exchange I will accept the deposit and then surprise the hacker by rejecting his withdrawal. I will also not allow trades from this address and for the main event I will ask him to do a KYC but of course he is not dumb enough to do it.

Using different ID's for KYC will make the attempt unsuccessful. I think news like this could still create an impact to the market because some will get scared. Anyway i found this news interesting because of how good or planned this hacker as it took them almost 6 years before they decided to make a move. They know that they stole an incredible amount of BTC and the world is watching the next step there going to make.

[darkangel11]

Well according to news on Coindesk two individuals were arrested who conspired to hack the exchange, they are married couples (quite surprising), they are expected to "appear in court at 3:00 p.m. ET in New York, according to a U.S. Department of Justice"
Am shocked this two are not aware the wallets are under strict monitoring by the security agents, after hiding for a few years, now they will face the full weight of the law.

Not surprising at all that it was a couple. Usually a spouse is the most trusted person you know. You tell them all those things you'd tell your parents, but parents could scold you, warn you, be more fearful.

It will be interesting to find out if they knew the hackers, how did the hackers contact them, what made the hackers trust them with billions of dollars. They say there's no honor among thieves so being the hacker I would expect them to try to steal from me or blackmail me... unless I knew them pretty well.

[Oilacris]

Where ever fund moving this wallet have detected by all exchange market and when this fund arriving on exchange account for depositing will get lock or account get trouble for withdrawing later. Still fund hacked from bitfinex not moving to other exchange just hold on hard ware wallet, the hacker not really brave moving his fund have announcement by Bitfinex team will banned and looking this hacker with bounty amount $400k. I think after last weeks with this issues not any impact with bitcoin and altcoin price keep stable pump because they can't move fund from wallet to exchange account for selling.

If I were the exchange I will accept the deposit and then surprise the hacker by rejecting his withdrawal. I will also not allow trades from this address and for the main event I will ask him to do a KYC but of course he is not dumb enough to do it.

Using different ID's for KYC will make the attempt unsuccessful. I think news like this could still create an impact to the market because some will get scared. Anyway i found this news interesting because of how good or planned this hacker as it took them almost 6 years before they decided to make a move. They know that they stole an incredible amount of BTC and the world is watching the next step there going to make.

About market impacts then we couldnt tell if it would happen or not but knowing that this market is highly reactive to fundamentals then it wouldnt be surprising that we would able to see these stuffs.

Speaking of close monitored addresses then its dumb that those couples hadnt realized that and on the time they had made their move on selling those hacked coins then it is really just

easy to traced up once you do sent out those coins on centralized exchange.

[nelson4lov]

I think the saddest part of this whole hacking story is that transactions can easily be traced and movements of Bitcoin from one wallet to another can be ascertained but there is nothing so far that can be done to get back the assets stolen. And that can mean a very big encouragement to other hackers to do everything possible and to even invest in more sophisticated tools and means to become successful in wreaking havoc in many big centralized exchanges...because the money is really in there...millions of money. This is one big reason why DEXs are getting more popular though nothing is really totally safe as long as we have extremely talented and creative hackers around.

The funds (BTC) that was moved by the hacker was laundered using tornado cash (a protocol in eth for private transactions) so it would be a lot harder to trace. One more thing to keep in mind is that DeFi platforms can be hacked as well resulting in users loss of funds. There's been a lot of this already - let's just pray we don't become victim of such experience because most exchanges don't compensate users.

[arwin100]

I think the saddest part of this whole hacking story is that transactions can easily be traced and movements of Bitcoin from one wallet to another can be ascertained but there is nothing so far that can be done to get back the assets stolen. And that can mean a very big encouragement to other hackers to do everything possible and to even invest in more sophisticated tools and means to become successful in wreaking havoc in many big centralized exchanges...because the money is really in there...millions of money. This is one big reason why DEXs are getting more popular though nothing is really totally safe as long as we have extremely talented and creative hackers around.

The funds (BTC) that was moved by the hacker was laundered using tornado cash (a protocol in eth for private transactions) so it would be a lot harder to trace. One more thing to keep in mind is that DeFi platforms can be hacked as well resulting in users loss of funds. There's been a lot of this already - let's just pray we don't become victim of such experience because most exchanges don't compensate users.

If we know the platform is vulnerable on possible attack then we must make sure that we didn't hold our balances their for quite long time and withdraw it frequently so that we can avoid getting compromise if that sad incident happen. We know most of exchange will not compensate their users that's why we need to choose the best among then like binance since we see how they go to those incident and make sure that the funds of their traders are safe.

[franky1]

seems the coin movements are related to authorities finding the thieves and seizing the coins

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-60310783

I cross-checked various sources and it appears that when they moved those coins ^{[on Feb 1]}, they were still on the loose...

Heather "tweeted" on Feb, 6 ^{[that would've not been the case if she had already been taken into custody]}.

authorities had investigated and identified the thieves(finding them) over time prior to jan 31st 2022,
court order(s) on feb1-4th to seize funds from multiple exchanges and also the 2 peoples private keys.
and the 2 people were arrested on the 8th feb