The ‘10,000 bitcoins’ stolen during the Bitfinex hack 5 years ago are moving

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[Blockchain Today reporter Jeong Seung-won] Cointelegraph reported that the long-term dormant bitcoin from hacking the Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange in 2016 is currently moving.

Bitcoin on the move is worth $660 million, contributing to Bitcoin’s downtrend by frightening some market participants. Although it is difficult for hackers to sell BTC, it is said that this move could bring fluctuations to the market.

Blockchain analytics bot Whale Alert sent its first warning by detecting transactions in 5 or more wallets that have been rarely used since the hacking in 2016.

The biggest deal is 1,241.3672 BTC, which is well over $78 million (hackers only pay a 0.00072910 BTC fee of about $45). Cointelegraph aggregated a total of 63 transactions, which is a movement of 10,050 BTC worth $620 million.

Although hackers have a unique history of intermittently transferring coins between wallets, today’s transactions are clearly the largest hacked bitcoin trading volume since the attack. Hackers have moved between 1-2% of coins over the years, and today they have moved 8.3% of about 120,000 BTC, more than $7.4 billion.

It is not easy to predict the purpose of the move. Some were transmitted between wallets known to be used by hackers, but there were also many transmissions to newly created wallets. Many observers point out that it is almost impossible for hackers to sell their BTC. The hacker attempted to sell 736 BTC through the Russian darknet market in 2020, some ironically returning to Bitfinex.

Hackers are unable to sell their coins, so some Twitter traders speculate that the point of travel may just scare the market, targeting potential tandems in the short term:

Hacker tracking is still ongoing, and in August of last year, Bitfinex offered $400 million to get information about the attacker. The case appeared to be a breakthrough when two Israeli brothers were accused of participating in the attack in 2019, but what the police recovered was a wallet far less than the 120,000 BTC that had been hacked.

The Bitfinex hack has already shaken the market. Coinbase is struggling to keep the price line at $350 per share after soaring to more than $425 per share. It’s still well above the benchmark price of $250 per share, but Bitcoin is dropping to $61,000 and traders still interpret it as a negative sign.

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