Original | Odaily Planet Daily
Author | jk
On October 24, local time in the US, a wallet associated with the US government was hacked, resulting in the theft of approximately $20 million in funds. These funds came from assets seized during the 2016 Bitfinex hack, involving multiple crypto addresses and complex fund flows. Just 20 hours later, the money was transferred back to an address controlled by the US government. What was the entire process of this incident?
For readers unfamiliar with the early history of the crypto world, the Bitfinex hack was a major event at that time.
On August 2, 2016, the Bitfinex exchange was hacked, leading to the theft of approximately 119,756 bitcoins from its hot wallet. Following the incident, the price of Bitcoin dropped nearly 20%, as investors panicked over the fear of a collapse similar to Mt. Gox, prompting many traders and investors to withdraw their funds from Bitfinex, forcing the exchange to suspend trading and deposits for nearly a week. After the incident, Bitfinex issued a token called BFX as an IOU to affected users as compensation for the stolen bitcoins. These tokens were later fully redeemed by Bitfinex at a 1:1 ratio.
In 2022, Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan pleaded guilty to money laundering conspiracy related to this hacking incident, with the government seizing approximately 95,000 stolen bitcoins from their controlled wallets, valued at about $3.6 billion, and subsequently seizing about $475 million related to the incident.
Today, there was unusual activity in the US government-controlled wallet related to the hacking incident.
Arkham monitored US government wallet transactions. Source: Arkham
According to monitoring, the US government address (the address where Bitfinex hack seized funds are stored) withdrew $6.57 million in stablecoins from Aave early this morning. Subsequently, the hacker transferred $20.71 million in funds to an address starting with "0x348," including USDC, USDT, and aUSDC. Following this, approximately $6.8 million in stablecoins was exchanged for Ethereum and distributed to multiple addresses, including Binance's deposit address and two new addresses. Arkham's analysis suggests that this indicates the hacker has begun laundering the money.
Nineteen hours later, the stolen funds began to be gradually returned by the hacker. The hacker returned a total of approximately $19.3 million in five transactions from different addresses, accounting for 88% of the total stolen funds. However, according to on-chain detective ZachXBT, this amount does not include a small portion of funds that have already been transferred to exchanges like Switchain, HitBTC, and N Exchange.
Funds returned as monitored by Arkham. Source: Arkham
Regarding the behavior of the funds circling back within 20 hours, community opinions are mixed: some believe this is the result of the FBI's work, quickly identifying the hacker and forcing them to return the funds. Others focus on the hacker transferring funds to Binance, believing this action could complicate the previously eased relationship between Binance and the US government. Additionally, Binance has a KYC mechanism to identify the hacker's true identity, which may also be a factor in the eventual return. Some even suggest that this incident could be an inside job or collusion, as this has been the true reason behind most hacking incidents in the past.
We will continue to monitor the developments of this incident.
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