Hi HODLers and Crypto Lovers,
Federal officials seized some $3.6 billion worth of bitcoin tied to the 2016 hack of the crypto exchange Bitfinex.
$3.6bn would make it definitely the top Bitcoin holder in the world (as least what we know of). The caveat is that technically, these funds are not the property of the US government if it is restituted to the orginal owner: Bitfinex.
The DOJ strongly implies that they might be the original hackers but does not claim it. Also, they do claim the couple has launder and use the proceeds.
The presumed outlaws are the married couple, Ilya "Dutch" Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan! Will we refer about them as Bonnie and Clyde going forward? This remains to be seem :D.
https://twitter.com/BTCGandalf/status/1491140031280410626
- BTCGandalf
Conspiracy theories (are they really?) come to the surface as many wonders how such individuals would store all their private keys on a single set of documents stored on a centralized cloud storage service.
“Those files contained the private keys required to access the digital wallet that directly received the funds stolen from Bitfinex, and allowed special agents to lawfully seize and recover more than 94,000 bitcoin that had been stolen from Bitfinex. The recovered bitcoin was valued at over $3.6 billion at the time of seizure."
Who are these individuals?
LinkedIn profiles show a Heather R. Morgan and Dutch Ilya Lichtenstein have listed themselves as employees of SalesFolk since 2009 and 2014, respectively.
Heather Morgan seems to have also been a former columnist at Inc. Magazine and Forbes, while Lichtenstein’s lists previous roles at MixRank, Endpass and 500 Startups.
LEO token pumping following the news
As you can read below, Bitfinex has always stated that they would use 80% of the proceeds of a potential recovery of the hacked funds to buyback and burn LEO tokens !
“If Bitfinex receives a recovery of the stolen bitcoin, as described in the UNUS SED LEO token white paper, Bitfinex will, within 18 months of the date it receives that recovery, use an amount equal to 80% of the recovered net funds to repurchase and burn outstanding UNUS SED LEO tokens,” the company said
LEO Token price
Sources:
US Officials Seize $3.6B in Bitcoin From 2016 Bitfinex Hack
