Earlier Tuesday, hackers moved a large portion of Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) stolen in the Bitfinex hack of 2016.
What Happened: According to a series of updates from Whale Alert on Tuesday, 94,643.29 BTC worth $3.55 billion was moved from the hacker’s wallet to another anonymous wallet.
⚠ ⚠ ⚠ ⚠ ⚠ ⚠ ⚠ ⚠ ⚠ ⚠ 10,000 #BTC (383,540,711 USD) of stolen funds transferred from Bitfinex Hack 2016 to unknown wallethttps://t.co/kvvWQpZoq8
— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) February 1, 2022
The hacker moved the funds in a series of 26 transactions. Some transfers contained 10,000 BTC worth $383 million and some transfers had just 0.29 BTC worth $11,377.
Why It Matters: The funds originate from a hack in August 2016, when 120,000 BTC was stolen from crypto exchange Bitfinex. At current prices, the entire sum would be worth more than $4.5 billion.
Despite the anonymity of transactions on the blockchain, the Bitfinex hacker has not been able to cash out with ease.
No, th e Bitfinex hacker can't sell the #Bitcoin (not in any volume).
— Alistair Milne (@alistairmilne) April 14, 2021
But he/she/they can move it to try to manipulate the market while they short it elsewhere ...
Until recently, Elliptic reported that the blacklisted wallet address had only managed to successfully launder 4% of the stolen Bitcoin.
"It is unlikely that these funds will be cashed out any time soon. Funds from this hack have been slowly laundered for over five years now and cashing-out large volumes over a short period of time would draw unwanted attention," said Elliptic.
The last time these stolen funds were on the move was in April 2021, when Bitcoin was trading close to an all-time high and prior to Coinbase Global Inc’s (NASDAQ:COIN) direct listing on the Nasdaq.
Price Action: Bitcoin is up 2.85% over 24 hours at $38,511.48 as of Tuesday morning.
