With the recent surge in Bitcoin prices, the blockchain data intelligence platform Arkham has also tracked a large transfer of Bitcoin from the seized Bitfinex hacker case by the US government, amounting to a total of 15,000 BTC.
(Bitcoin Market Crash! It briefly dropped below $59,000, plummeting 8%, and liquidating over $700 million from 180,000 people.)
(Background Supplement: Bitcoin breaks through $64,000, but Matrixport founder warns that March is vulnerable and BTC may retrace 15% after the halving.)
Bitfinex, a veteran cryptocurrency exchange, experienced one of the largest hacker attacks in history in August 2016, when hackers stole up to 119,756 bitcoins (valued at about $71 million at the time). With the recent strong rise in Bitcoin, based on the current price of $61,224, the value of these bitcoins has increased by over 103 times to $7.3 billion.
In fact, in February 2022, the US Department of Justice captured the US-Russian couple Ilya Lichtenstein, an entrepreneur, and his 33-year-old rapper wife Heather Morgan, who were suspected of laundering nearly 120,000 bitcoins from the Bitfinex hacker case. They successfully seized 94,000 bitcoins, and the case came to a conclusion.
(Read more: The truth about the theft of 120,000 bitcoins – New York money laundering couple admits to attacking Bitfinex hacker)
Is the US government transferring BTC to crash the market?
It is worth mentioning that early on the 29th, after the price of Bitcoin surged past $64,000, a wallet containing funds seized by the US government transferred 1 bitcoin (BTC) around 1:39 PM Eastern Time. Less than half an hour later, the remaining 2,817 BTC in that wallet was also transferred, with a total value of approximately $173 million.
Then, another wallet containing about 12,300 BTC first transferred 0.01 BTC to an unknown address, and then the rest of the bitcoins were completely transferred out. The value of these transactions is approximately $750 million. Ultimately, the total value of bitcoins transferred from these two wallets is approximately $923 million.
(US government transferring BTC)
The US government is one of the world’s largest Bitcoin whales, second only to Satoshi Nakamoto’s addresses holding 1.1 million bitcoins (approximately 22,000 addresses holding about 1.1 million BTC, but have not been used for a long time) and the 248,600 bitcoins in the labeled cold wallet of the exchange Binance (which should belong to customers).
(Such a large amount of bitcoins, where did they come from? According to on-chain data tool Dune, apart from the seized bitcoins this time, the US government has seized over 200,000 bitcoins from various actions involving cybercriminals and darknet markets between November 2020 and 2022. Currently, these BTC are mainly stored in encrypted, password-protected offline cold wallets controlled by the US Department of Justice, Internal Revenue Service, or other institutions.
The specific source details are as follows:
November 2020 – Silk Road, the largest darknet black market, seized – 69,369 BTC
January 2022 – Bitfinex hacker case seized – 94,643 BTC
March 2022 – Seized from Silk Road hacker James Zhong – 51,326 BTC, the US government still holds 41.5K BTC from this portion.)
(Bitfinex hacker case in Washington Court – “Money Laundering Couple” wife granted $3 million bail, husband remains detained)
(Analysis by SlowMist – US Department of Justice cracks the 2016 Bitfinex hacking case, dissecting key investigative points)
(Bitfinex $4.5 billion theft – “Money Laundering Couple” transferred to Washington, preparing for $8 million bail)