As reported by Whale Alert, just before dawn (CET) some Bitcoin (BTC) funds from the Bitfinex hack have been moved.
⚠ 2.275952 #BTC (20,524 USD) of stolen funds transferred from Bitfinex Hack 2016 to unknown wallet
— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) May 21, 2020
The attack had taken place in August 2016, and about 120 thousand Bitcoin (BTC) had been stolen.
30 BTC worth over $270,000 would have been moved. The funds were transferred to an unknown wallet.
A similar amount was also moved last year, again to an unknown wallet.
At the time of the attack, the price of bitcoin was around $600 for a value of over $70 million, while now, after 4 years, the figure exceeds $1 billion. It was a very important loss for the exchange, which continued to operate despite everything.
A portion, just under 30 BTC, was recovered last year thanks to the US government forces, and these funds were converted into dollars to pay the owners of the RRT token (Recovery Right Token), i.e. those who had lost their bitcoins due to the hack.
Over time, services and methods have been developed to be able to stop criminals, since one of the positive aspects of the blockchain is that movements and addresses cannot be hidden and this allows for easy traceability. Security measures have been introduced to freeze funds as soon as they enter the different exchanges and are then blocked, in an attempt to identify the criminals.
Recently, there have been other similar movements linked to previous attacks. For example, the stolen funds from Cryptopia were moved (over 5,700 Ethereum) and then, only a week ago, the funds from the attack against Upbit, just under 10,000 Ethereum (ETH), were moved. This indicates that criminals are always active and seek different solutions to liquidate the stolen cryptocurrencies.
