The $2.5B Stolen BTC From Bitfinex Is On The Move: Report

The $2.5B stolen BTC from Bitfinex exchange is on the move according to blockchain analytics bot Whale Alert so let’s read further in our latest Bitcoin news.

The receiving wallet address holds more than 90,000 BTC worth $3.6 billion. The $2.5B stolen BTC from Bitfinex has moved from the hackers’ wallet to an unknown wallet according to the data from Whale Alerts. 20 Transactions involving the stolen BTC were flagged and a sum worth $2.5 billion at the time of writing has moved. This is more than half of the amount seized by the hackers that are estimated to be around 120,000 BTC. The biggest transaction detected was around 10,000 BTC worth over $383 million while other transactions amounted to 0.29 BTC. The wallet address received the blacklisted BTC which holds a total of 94,643 BTC which is around $3.6 billion.

⚠ ⚠ ⚠ ⚠ ⚠ ⚠ ⚠ ⚠ ⚠ ⚠ 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

While it is impossible to determine the exact purpose why the hackers are moving the BTC, the speculators think it is to scare the investors into selling more BTC. Back in 2021, as hackers moved 10,000 of their coins, Twitter user Alistair Milne outlined that since the hackers cant’ cash out, they could be moving the BTC to induce market panic while having short positions. The hackers still can’t sell but they can move the coins and manipulate the market.

In 2019, some of the stolen BTC were returned to the exchange thanks to US authorities in the same year, the hack-related arrests were made in Israel when the police tracked the fund movement worth $1.5 million. A year later, Bitfinex offered up to $400 million for everyone that will give information that can lead to the recovery of the stolen funds and the amount will be considered costs of recovery as per the exchange.

As pointed out by an analyst in CryptoQuant, the movement in Bitfinex reserve seems to be having an impact on the BTC price recently. The on-chain indicator is the derivatives exchange reserve that measures the total amount of BTC held in wallets of the exchange. The exchange in focus here is Bitfinex which is why this metric is called the Bitfinex reserve.  When the value of the indicator increases, it means that more coins are being deposited to the exchange and this trend could be bearish as the supply of BTC on exchanges indicates the selling supply as the data shows a correlation between both.