Impact of Bitfinex hack on the economy

[Dunamisx]

$3.5 billion recovered out of the stolen $4.5 billion by
the couple: Heather Morgan and Ilya Lichtenstein after a thorough investigations, they were arrested by the US department of Justice for being the masterminds behind the hack of Bitfinex exchange in 2016 claiming about $4.5 biliion

“After the execution of court-authorized search warrants of online accounts controlled by Lichtenstein and Morgan, special agents obtained access to files within an online account controlled by Lichtenstein. Those files contained the private keys required to access the digital wallet that directly received the funds stolen from Bitfinex, and allowed special agents to lawfully seize and recover more than 94,000 bitcoin that had been stolen from Bitfinex. The recovered Bitcoin was valued at over $3.6 billion at the time of seizure.”

Aside the hack, it was stated that they own one of the wealthiest bitcoin account of which i know that privacy is not secured here which is one of the major reasons one have not to make use of centralized exchanges.

As am against any unlawful act as such in Bitfinex hack, my question is that, what can we say about government impact on regulating crypto as in the case of Bitfinex.

What impact do you think this will have on bitcoin price if the total seizure were back into circulation?

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Aside the hack, it was stated that they own one of the wealthiest bitcoin account of which i know that privacy is not secured here which is one of the major reasons one have not to make use of centralized exchanges.

Even if they are the one that worked for the coin, it can be seized by the government. What I just wish to know is how almost the whole amount of the bitcoin when Bitfenex was hacked were with them possibly they are the hackers. But only noncustododial ways and decentralized means of exchanging can help in having total control

What impact do you think this will have on bitcoin price if the total seizure were back into circulation?

If you are a bitcoin holder, you do not have to panic, the effect of this on bitcoin price will not be significantly noticed.

[mindrust]

Sounds shady to me. I don't really buy that hacked crap anymore. This was probably a inside job. Maybe it was all planned. If there was a real hacker, he probably wouldn't do something that stupid knowing that he won't spend any of that money. Something don't fit right here.

As for the bitcoin holders, you shouldn't worry at all. $3.6b is small potatoes now. It won't affect the markets.

[Beparanf]

As am against any unlawful act as such in Bitfinex hack, my question is that, what can we say about government impact on regulating crypto as in the case of Bitfinex.

What impact do you think this will have on bitcoin price if the total seizure were back into circulation?

Obviously this huge amount will be refunded to all affected user on Bitfinex. However the government can seize it if Bitfinex didn't claim it. The impact will be huge because the government will surely liquidate it immediately after the court decision since it will be beneficial for them as additional budget. The amount is too huge for them to still hold it for a long time so they will sell it off or auction it for public buy. This will surely create panic among the Bitcoin holders because this is a huge quantity that needs to be absorb by the current circulating Bitcoin.

[mk4]

It really depends on what they're going to end up doing with the money. If they ended up deciding to sell it for whatever reason, it's really unlikely that they're going to dump it on spot exchanges in the first place. Instead, they're very likely going to sell it through OTC as to not heavily and directly impact the market.

[tabas]

What impact do you think this will have on bitcoin price if the total seizure were back into circulation?

Nothing. No matter what the good and bad news are there, one thing for sure is that bitcoin will continue to thrive. And even those seized coins are back in circulation and they start selling it, it will eventually go up as everyone's going to buy those cheap bitcoins.
There's really no need to worry about this news. We've seen many type of bad news and FUD yet the market has grown stronger and better. That's what I think and it doesn't make me worry whether they put that seized coins on an auction or dump it immediately.

[paxmao]

The impact will be on credibility of exchanges and in the safety. Also the general public may think that crypto is "dangerous" or "risky", but I got the feeling that it is anyway the case. As always, your keys you bitcoin and anything else is running an unnecessary third party risk in the form of custodial intermediaries. The lesson that has to be learnt over and over is that if you hodl a significant bit of bitcoin you should not have it on a exchange or at least not in just one exchange.

Other than that... there may be a dip in price, so excellent to buy more.

[Lucius]

$3.5 billion recovered out of the stolen $4.5 billion by
the couple: Heather Morgan and Ilya Lichtenstein after a thorough investigations, they were arrested by the US department of Justice for being the masterminds behind the hack of Bitfinex exchange in 2016 claiming about $4.5 biliion

Bitfinex was hacked by two Israeli brothers, and the people in question are just trying to launder that money - although there is no doubt that there is a connection between them - but those who devised the hack are still two brothers, one of which belonged to a special section of the Israeli IDF army.

The Israeli Police cyber unit arrested two brothers, Eli and Assaf Gigi, for allegedly perpetrating a multi-year phishing scheme and participating in a 2016 hack of Bitfinex. Israeli news outlet Ynet reports the two allegedly stole over $100 million in cryptocurrency... Eli is a former computer science expert in the IDF, which one reddit user said “would be Unit 8200, the largest military branch in the Israeli army. It specializes in hacking, spying and creating computer viruses (Stuxnet) - many of them are now employed by Google, Microsoft and Coinbase.”

What impact do you think this will have on bitcoin price if the total seizure were back into circulation?

Do you think that 90+ thousand BTC can mean something in a market that has almost 19 million BTC in circulation (mined so far)? These funds will one day either be sold at auction or partially returned to Bitfinex, which should return them to damaged clients. These coins have not disappeared from circulation, nor will they disappear if their owner becomes someone else.

[hugeblack]

The issue of arresting them does not seem logical because hackers have technical knowledge that makes them keep that money in cold storage instead of this method.

Bitfinex was hacked by two Israeli brothers, and the people in question are just trying to launder that money - although there is no doubt that there is a connection between them - but those who devised the hack are still two brothers, one of which belonged to a special section of the Israeli IDF army.

Perhaps this story is more logical because I think hackers are smarter than that in general. Let's wait for more details, because it seems that what happened may be a coincidence or related to another case.

What impact do you think this will have on bitcoin price if the total seizure were back into circulation?

It will not have an effect. On the contrary, the effect will be positive. The seized money often takes a while to return to the platform, and after paying taxes and others, the matter may settle from one to three months.
Thus, when it is pumped into the market, the price may have gone up already.

[stompix]

Bitfinex was hacked by two Israeli brothers, and the people in question are just trying to launder that money - although there is no doubt that there is a connection between them - but those who devised the hack are still two brothers, one of which belonged to a special section of the Israeli IDF army.

The Israeli Police cyber unit arrested two brothers, Eli and Assaf Gigi, for allegedly perpetrating a multi-year phishing scheme and participating in a 2016 hack of Bitfinex. Israeli news outlet Ynet reports the two allegedly stole over $100 million in cryptocurrency... Eli is a former computer science expert in the IDF, which one reddit user said “would be Unit 8200, the largest military branch in the Israeli army. It specializes in hacking, spying and creating computer viruses (Stuxnet) - many of them are now employed by Google, Microsoft and Coinbase.”

That is just poor journalism from coindesk

The Gigi brothers Eli, 31, and Assaf, 21, also allegedly constructed a phishing scheme that involved luring investors from crypto trading forums, such as Telegram or Reddit, onto websites that mimicked prominent crypto exchanges. They would collect the traders’ login and wallet information and use it to transfer the funds stored on legitimate exchanges to their own accounts.

They didn't hack anything, they were just sending phising links to eveyone, why would you try to get login details when you had access directly to the cold wallet?

[marilynmanson21]

What impact do you think this will have on bitcoin price if the total seizure were back into circulation?

I don't think it will affect the market if the government sells it gradually, it's just a stupid government if it sells bitcoin prices cheaply, at least if the confiscated BTC can help the country's finances why should they destroy the bitcoin price itself

[AmoreJaz]

What impact do you think this will have on bitcoin price if the total seizure were back into circulation?

Nothing. No matter what the good and bad news are there, one thing for sure is that bitcoin will continue to thrive. And even those seized coins are back in circulation and they start selling it, it will eventually go up as everyone's going to buy those cheap bitcoins.
There's really no need to worry about this news. We've seen many type of bad news and FUD yet the market has grown stronger and better. That's what I think and it doesn't make me worry whether they put that seized coins on an auction or dump it immediately.

they haven't sold yet that large amount of btc and i don't think they will sell it all at once. and in any case, we have seen many times how bitcoin auctions were done. it may have an impact at the time of auction but afterwards, the btc price always recover. so yes, imo, there's no need to be paranoid about it. and in case they will sell cheap, it will be your opportunity to get your satoshis.
and btw, are they going to give back the recovered funds to bitfinex or not? we don't know yet where will those bitcoins go. 

[adaseb]

Anyone know what will happen with the recovered funds? I was part of the hack back in 2016 and was given some token in return. It wasn’t LEO but something else, that token rose in value and I sold it and my loss in terms of fiat was very minimal, so I didn’t care and moved on.

So now that they are recovered who will get all of them? Most likely it will be the owners of Bitfinex since they gave us those tokens back in 2016. Would be nice to get some of it back in BTC term and not fiat.

[dunfida]

Anyone know what will happen with the recovered funds? I was part of the hack back in 2016 and was given some token in return. It wasn’t LEO but something else, that token rose in value and I sold it and my loss in terms of fiat was very minimal, so I didn’t care and moved on.

So now that they are recovered who will get all of them? Most likely it will be the owners of Bitfinex since they gave us those tokens back in 2016. Would be nice to get some of it back in BTC term and not fiat.

If there are some sort of compensation into those times where bitfinex owners had done then it would be normal that they would really be getting all of those coins/assets that had been hacked
since they wouldnt really be having any liability since they had already done their part  but it would be good if they would consider it out on giving some portion at least into those users
who had been affected but its better not to be hopeful for this thing since there would be no assurance that it could happen.

[dothebeats]

This is not a case of a lack of government regulation but rather an insecure site with vulnerabilities that can be exploited. IMO, the recovered funds will not affect the price of bitcoin in a huge way. Maybe once the funds were given back as compensation, people will immediately sell, but seeing that bitcoin is performing positively as of late, I doubt that's something people would do. The government will probably hold on to those coins just like they do on previous seized coins, and auction them off to not affect the market directly.

[darewaller]

snip~

That is just poor journalism from coindesk

The Gigi brothers Eli, 31, and Assaf, 21, also allegedly constructed a phishing scheme that involved luring investors from crypto trading forums, such as Telegram or Reddit, onto websites that mimicked prominent crypto exchanges. They would collect the traders’ login and wallet information and use it to transfer the funds stored on legitimate exchanges to their own accounts.

They didn't hack anything, they were just sending phising links to eveyone, why would you try to get login details when you had access directly to the cold wallet?

I wouldn't really be too shocked. I have been in journalism for over 6 years now (not really, just content writing, but to places that does have journalists so I know them) and I could tell you that these people barely research their topic. In fact, they barely read the news they are sharing as well.

I have seen people who wrote topics that are so irrelevant to the context that, you would assume they are writing 100 articles a day by how rushed of a job it was and that was just the only thing they wrote that week. Journalism is not what it used to be, people do not care about news as much as they used to, hell many people get news from twitter let alone reading a newspaper, so journalism is a dying business with money still in it, making it difficult to find people who would be willing to do the work for a little amount of money just to make their bosses richer.

[tygeade]

they haven't sold yet that large amount of btc and i don't think they will sell it all at once. and in any case, we have seen many times how bitcoin auctions were done. it may have an impact at the time of auction but afterwards, the btc price always recover. so yes, imo, there's no need to be paranoid about it. and in case they will sell cheap, it will be your opportunity to get your satoshis.
and btw, are they going to give back the recovered funds to bitfinex or not? we don't know yet where will those bitcoins go. 

It is hard for them to sell it because the address that they use are already track, much more if they sold it at once or at bigger amount but now that the hackers have caught, the bitcoins that they stole will never be sold. They only waste time and effort there, how unfortunate they are. Kudos to the authorities for doing a good job.

Other hackers now are thinking if they will continue their evil plans after reading this news. Anyway I do not think someone will buy a stolen coin even if we say the price is cheap. Better if they will return the coins back to the exchange and the exchange will re distribute it to the costumers which bitcoin got hacked.

[pinggoki]

I think that the impact wouldn't be felt, that much isn't bitcoin around 800 billion USD in total market cap already? Then that means that even when those stolen bitcoin gets reintroduced then it's not going to be adding that much effect and those bitcoin seized won't be reintroduced straight away, they're going to be auctioned and those who wins the bid will have the final say.

[Similificator]

- In all honesty, I am quite suspicious about this hack. Just think about it, if they were the real masterminds or if this hack is even real, just imagine how much thinking and plannknv has gone through this scheme. Do you think that if they were smart enough to device such a plan they would not have any exit plans or at least have some commonsense that if they do this or that they'd be fckd? Either this is a fake hack, or these poor couple were used as a scapegoat. Oh well, this is just my own opinion anyway.

What impact do you think this will have on bitcoin price if the total seizure were back into circulation?

-It'll barely have an effect obviously. The good thing about this though is that at least these 94,000 bitcoins will go back to the market and be circulated as it should be.

[so98nn]

[...]
As am against any unlawful act as such in Bitfinex hack, my question is that, what can we say about government impact on regulating crypto as in the case of Bitfinex.
[...]

Definitely this has made a worst impression on them and we should not care about it much since fiat is more hampered as compared to the bitcoin. I mean on any given time period there are cases of bank looting, with shooting around, peeps getting hurt, sometimes cross firing death tolls etc. I mean, if we compare it in that sense then definitely bitcoin is far safer and also Bitfinex Hack won't matter much. Most of the money is now recovered in both circulation liquidity and actual coins which were lost and found.

Government is regulating the fiat, but it does not mean that they are able to stop the robberies all the time.

Moreover, its better than drugs and alcohol. Crypto is at least clean without any impact on economy as such.