On February 1st, about $2.5 billion was transferred from the Bitfinex hacker accounts. Cointelegraph said that, after evaluating the transactions, around 90,000 Bitcoin worth $3.6 billion had been moved to a single wallet address. The intruders were apprehended after more than a week.
Two people suspected of being involved in the 2016 breach were arrested, and $3.6 billion in cryptocurrency was seized by the United States Department of Justice. The Department of Justice (DoJ) said that federal investigators were able to “trace the money through the blockchain” to find and arrest Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan, who are accused of hacking.
Even though some of the money was found this year, many people in the community were taken aback by the most recent recovery, as they had not believed it was possible to retrieve the money after five years. After this news broke, reactions from the crypto community were mixed.
Morgan’s middle name is “Reyhan,” which is a common name in Turkey, and Ava Labs’ founder Emin Gün Sirer speculates that she may be of Turkish descent and hence one of the wealthiest Turks. He also expressed gratitude to the authorities for their efforts in recouping the money.
Binance’s CEO, Changpeng Zhao, has two concerns about getting the money back. With a tweet, he asked, “Did Bitfinex lose or make money from the hack?” If they do recover the BTC, he said, “How should they divide it with LEO holders or the folks who suffered a loss by accepting LEO at the time of the hack and then sold LEO?”
Maybe Ran Neuner, host of Crypto Banter, has the answer to this. The hack could be the best deal ever, according to Neuner’s tweet.
The creator of Crypto Pragmatist, Jack Niewold, says that there could be huge effects on BTC and LEO. It’s likely that it doesn’t affect the bitcoin market too much because of selling techniques like TWAP and OTC trades, but $4 billion is a substantial number nonetheless, he added.
