Everything seemed to have turned awry after the hack. The hack appeared brilliantly planned and executed
Was it though? I admit I haven't been following any recent revelations but back in the day it looked like Bitfinex fucked up hugely (e.g. left a major exploit unpatched for months and a script kiddie got lucky), then tried to save their face by making it sound like they were unfortunate victims of some government-level hacking attack.
Also keep in mind that $4.5 billion being mentioned in the news is nonsense, those coins were worth maybe $80 million at the time. Still a huge amount but not billions and Bitfinex was accordingly shoddy with their systems (I used it briefly in 2015 or 16 and it felt like some dude's weekend project rather than a serious financial institution).
Well, it could have been childish negligence on the part of Bitfinex. If the reports were true, there were fundamental security failures found like keeping 2 of 3 security keys in a single device such that having access to that device could mean having access to the entire operating system, among others.
However, that it was like a weekend project, didn't occur to me. What I can remember is that when I used it many years ago as a newbie, it was a giant in the industry, competing against the popular Bittrex. The assumption, albeit naïve, was that the larger the exchange is, the better security it has. Bitfinex was at the top of the food chain. Much was expected from them.
Yeah, it was only around $80 million, but the market was also much smaller at that time. Compared today when Bitcoin is worth hundreds of billions, it was probably just a single-digit billion at that time. That it happened to a powerhouse in the industry actually sent shockwaves to the entire market causing the price to plunge.