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$7.5B in stolen Bitcoin from 2016 Bitfinex hack has just been moved
@Mr. Whale:
WTF! $7.5 Billion In Stolen #Bitcoin from the 2016 Bitfinex Hack has just been moved for the first time in 5 years. pic.twitter.com/WJJ3smY8dc
Maybe someone with more understanding of blockchain/cryptocurrency than I have can answer this...but is there even a way to move to a "real" currency without it being tracked? If so, how? If not, this is even more curious...
I don't know much about other crypto, but with bitcoin I am aware that there are services that launder traceable funds by pooling it together with normal bitcoin. With bitcoin there's always some trace of how a funds have been moved, but the idea is to make it harder to figure out. You can also convert bitcoin to another crypto, there are some which attempt to implement blockchains that can not be analyzed. Either way, with billions I think it would take a long time before all of it can be actually used in the real world.
I didn’t know if there was a way to basically mark certain bitcoins as “stolen” sort of how US bills are serialized so they can be somewhat tracked.
Either way, if they laundered even 1% of the bitcoin, that would be millions of US dollars.
I don't think it goes down to the level of the bitcoin but you can say that wallet X is tainted and then mark anyone who receives those tainted funds is also tainted. Based on comments from Reddit I think that's what a lot of exchanges/mixers do, at least that first step.
It's a matter of doing a trade with someone else who has what you want. They may have already done it, if the new account belongs to someone else. We can't see the other side of the transaction (if any) by looking at Bitcoin movements.
But if that's what happened, whoever has the Bitcoin now has the same problem of doing something useful with it while they're being watched. Somehow, they need to trade with someone innocent or who has plausible deniability, and that's difficult with such a large amount.
True, but as I mentioned in a different comment, if they can move even 1% of that, it’s still millions of dollars.
Well, suppose the original criminal sold it to their fence for $75 million (1% market price). They got their money and got out, but the fence still needs to figure out what to do with Bitcoin that's theoretically worth $7.5 billion. It's the same problem all over again, except they invested $75 million to get it. Though, if someone were willing to pay that much, maybe they have a good idea what to do next?
Some things are just too valuable and closely watched to sell easily.
The only way some are speculating on how they could move it is trade them to XMR (Monero is completely anonymous) using Atomic Swaps (later added to Monero this year to trade XMR and Bitcoin without an exchange as middleman). Other comment i read who would want to trade tainted Bitcoin to Monero?, someone offered to buy some of this Bitcoin to have them as NFT collective.
Can a kind soul please explain me what does that mean and why is this noteworthy?
Nobody "lost the keys" to that $7.5 billion, so to speak, and likely will launder it out in the future.
At current valuation it's one of the biggest thefts of any kind, ever, which is kind of fascinating to me. Largest ever bank robberies don't come close, and even the implausibly large fictional heist in Die Hard is only one fifth of this ($640m in 1988, ~$1.5b inflation adjusted).
They could hold it when the Bitcoin price goes up further, not so far when Bitcoin goes to 100k.