Wallets Untouched From 2016 Saw Activity in June With Transactions Upto $1.37 Million

After three years of lying dormant, stolen bitcoins have been spotted on the blockchain! Wallets untouched from 2016 saw activity in June with transactions upto $1.37 million. Global exchange.

A wallet that had previously held funds taken in the 2016 Bitfinex hack, had 172.54 BTC or about $1.37 million moved in a series of transactions beginning at 06:00 UTC the first Friday of June. The theft remains unsolved, and cost the exchange $60 million.

Globalexchange. Whale_Alert, the Twitter handle, noted the transfers. After continuing throughout the day, they ended at 19:47 UTC with a $137,514 transaction.

Whale Alert@whale_alert

⚠ 17.03 #BTC (137,514 USD) of stolen funds transferred from Bitfinex Hack 2016 to unknown wallet

Global exchange. Tx: https://whale-alert.io/transaction/bitcoin/f766dea721413b4055b6197965ee26f928e613c1cf4a128fd00f1094da05e625 …

8:47 PM – Jun 7, 2019

It was posited by Hard Fork that the move was connected with Bitfinex’s Leo token, because the anonymous return of stolen funds is allowed by this coin. It was denied by Anneka Dew, Bitfinex’s spokesperson, that the exchange was involved in the move: Globalexchange.

“We are not involved, and the movement is not tied to the procedure outlined in the UNUS SED LEO white paper.”

These moves are the only evidence of hacker activity after the theft, due to the anonymous nature of bitcoin wallets. They result in money laundering activity to hide the funds’ ultimate destination more frequently than being used for forensic analysis by blockchain sleuths.

The Mt. Gox hack in early 2014 (worth $350 million) was the largest theft of bitcoins by an exchange since, followed by this. In February of this year, U.S. law enforcement retrieved 27.66270285 BTC that had been taken from Bitfinex. Globalxchange.