Category: Bitfinex

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Bitfinex Crypto News Payments Social media Tether

Tether and Bitfinex Launch P2P Video Chat App ‘Keet’

Tether and Bitfinex have joined forces with software company Hypercore to launch a fully encrypted, peer-to-peer video chat application.

Keet is the first app to be built on Holepunch, a platform that allows developers to incorporate Web3 applications. It will initially only be available on desktop, though all three companies predict there will soon be a mobile app featuring “amazing” video quality:

Payment App Also in the Works

Holepunch, which is closed-source but expected to become open-source later this year, doesn’t run on a blockchain but uses the Lightning Network, a “second-layer solution” that speeds up Bitcoin transactions while reducing costs.

This would enable a payment app to be built on Holepunch, with the Tether stablecoin (USDT) supporting a default payment system. In late May, USDT was integrated into Polygon, enabling 19,000 decentralised applications (DApps) on the ecosystem to use it.

More Investment Dollars to Come

Tether, Bitfinex and Hypercore have already poured US$10 million into Holepunch, which could see tens more millions of dollars in further investments, they added.

The Keet app, like Holepunch, is free to use and is expected to be more private and secure than Web2 centralised peers such as Zoom or Google Meet. This is because Keet users can make calls directly to another individual’s computer, with nothing stored on a server.

As Holepunch CEO Mathias Buus has said, “This app is for everyone.”

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Bitcoin Bitfinex Crime Crypto News

Bitfinex Hack and Bitcoin Laundering Scheme Coming to Netflix

Remember the Bitfinex hack of 2016? Well, this real-life story is now coming to Netflix as a documentary series about the married couple who allegedly laundered part of the proceeds of the hack – an aspiring rapper called Heather Morgan and her husband, Ilya “Dutch” Lichtenstein, both arrested in New York last week.

Streaming giant Netflix will produce the series centred on the Bitfinex hack, which amounted to 120,000 BTC or around US$4.5 billion. It will be directed by American filmmaker and producer Chris Smith.

Morgan and Lichtenstein were arrested on charges of laundering over US$3.6 billion worth of Bitcoin, almost three-quarters of the hack’s total proceeds. Investigators tracked movement of the assets on the blockchain as the couple tried to liquidate them by buying and selling NFTs (non-fungible tokens), physical gold, using fake identities and online accounts.

Whale Alert Spots 10,000 BTC From Bitfinex Hack

Earlier this month, Whale Alert reported that almost US$400 million in proceeds from the Bitfinex hack had been transferred to an unknown wallet.

As an interesting side note, the LEO token, which is a basic exchange utility token used on Bitfinex to lower trading, blew up 60 percent in value following the seizure of the 120,000 BTC.

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Bitcoin Bitfinex Crypto Exchange Crypto News Cryptocurrencies Hackers Illegal Tokens

Bitfinex Token LEO Soars 60% Amid BTC Seizure from 2016 Hack

Bitfinex’s UNUS SED LEO token (LEO), an altcoin most had forgotten since it launched in 2019, has just surged 60 percent in value following the seizure of almost US$4 billion in Bitcoin lost in an infamous 2016 hack.

LEO Price Hits All-Time High

LEO went from trading at US$4.97 to US$8.04, according to data from CoinMarketCap, reaching an all-time high. The price has settled since to US$6.84, but the surge seems to be related to the seizure of stolen crypto assets that formerly belonged to Bitfinex users.

On February 8, the US Department of Justice announced it had recovered 94,000 BTC stolen in the infamous hack of the crypto exchange Bitfinex. The 2016 hack saw 119,754 BTC stolen, worth about US$72 million at the time. The value of the stolen crypto is now almost worth US$4 billion. On February 1, an estimated US$3.5 billion in BTC was moved from wallets associated with the hack into a single wallet, alerting authorities to the stolen Bitfinex BTC.

Bitfinex CTO Paolo Ardoino took to Twitter to express his gratitude:

Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said in a statement: “Today’s arrests, and the department’s largest financial seizure ever, show that cryptocurrency is not a safe haven for criminals.” The statement also named Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan as the two culprits charged with attempting to launder the stolen property.

According to the FBI, Morgan and her husband Lichtenstein spent part of the proceeds on gold, NFTs and other items. Each faces up to 25 years in federal prison should they be convicted.

LEO Buys Back

In 2019, Bitfinex sold its Leo token and raised US$1 billion in 10 days. The token is a basic exchange utility token, so using it on Bitfinex lowers trading fees. However, LEO has an additional unique property. According to its whitepaper, the firm pledged to use most of any recovered BTC from the hack to purchase LEO on the open market and burn it after.

The whitepaper indicates: “Bitfinex and its subsidiaries will use an amount equal to at least 80 percent of the recovered net funds from the Bitfinex hack …. to repurchase and burn outstanding LEO tokens.”

The whitepaper also gives the firm 18 months to dispose of the BTC, thereby allowing it to do so at a time-weighted average price rather than shock the market with one giant sale.

In a statement following the news of the seizure, Bitfinex said: “We want to express our appreciation for the dedication and hard work by the DoJ team that led to this great success. We will continue to support their efforts.”

LEO comes from the Latin phrase, “unus sed leo”, a line in the Aesop’s fable The Lioness, and the moral of the story is quality over quantity. If all goes according to plan, there will soon be considerably fewer LEO tokens in circulation.

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Bitfinex Crypto News Hackers

Bitfinex Hackers of 2016 Move $3.5 Billion Worth of Bitcoin

Billions of dollars’ worth of bitcoin (BTC) stolen in the infamous Bitfinex hack of five years ago have been aggregated into a single wallet in 23 transactions from various addresses. Law enforcement and top analytics firms are still trying to recapture the spoils.

Stolen Bitfinex BTC Resurfaces

On February 1, an estimated US$3.5 billion in BTC was moved from wallets associated with the infamous Bitfinex hack into a single wallet. The Bitfinex hack was one of the worst in history with the perpetrators getting away with 119,756 BTC (now worth nearly US$5 billion).

According to blockchain analytics firm Elliptic, “so far this morning, 94,643.29 bitcoins [worth] US$3.55 billion have been moved in 23 transactions from a wallet associated with a theft from Bitfinex in 2016 to a new address”.

Flagged account sending 26 tx. Source: Blockstream

The number of BTC transferred amounts to only 79 percent of the total bitcoins drained from Bitfinex in 2016. According to Elliptic, the funds were laundered through darknet markets like Hydra and the privacy-focused Wasabi wallet, but the majority have now again seen the light of day.

Movement Detected Last April

The last time hackers moved some of the bitcoin was in April 2021, when they transferred over US$700 million worth to an unknown wallet during the same time Coinbase was being listed on Nasdaq.

Since the hack, Bitfinex has been trying to recover the stolen funds, stating that to this day that “Bitfinex continues to work globally with law enforcement agencies, digital token exchanges, and wallet providers to recover the Bitcoin stolen in the 2016 hack”. To date, it has recovered about 50 bitcoins (worth nearly US$2 million at current prices), a spokesperson told Decrypt.

Difficulty Trying to Sell Stolen BTC

If the thieves were ever able to onsell all those bitcoins, it has been suggested that it could have an impact on the market as more than 100,000 BTC would come on stream, potentially bringing down the price.

However, as storing and moving bitcoins between unknown wallets is considerably easier than actually selling them, these funds are being carefully monitored with many of the associated wallets blacklisted, making any sale extremely difficult.

Bitfinex itself has also offered a US$400 million bounty for the return of the stolen funds. The Bitfinex hack made the multimillion-dollar hacks of Bilaxy (August 2021) and Mitmart (December 2021) look like small fry in comparison.

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Bitfinex Cryptocurrencies

Crypto Traders Shift Towards DEX Platforms as Trust in Centralized Exchanges Dwindles

The cryptocurrency market is home to thousands of cryptocurrency exchanges — most of them wholly centralized and prone to hacks, mishandling of client funds, and outright exit scams. 

While centralized exchanges such as Coinbase, Binance, and Bitfinex have dominated crypto market volumes over the last decade, the next generation of decentralized exchanges, or DEXs, are slowly winning over security-conscious traders and investors.

Cryptocurrency price and market capitalization platform CoinGecko released its Q2 2020 Quarterly Cryptocurrency Report on July 9, revealing insight into the latest trading habits of cryptocurrency investors — decentralized exchanges are gaining traction.

Centralized Exchanges Lose Volume as DEXs Gain

Data revealed in CoinGecko’s report indicates that spot volume on major centralized crypto exchanges such as Binance have decreased by $324 million, or 7 percent. Both Binance and Bitfinex, two of the largest centralized crypto exchanges, experienced a significant reduction on total spot trading volume in the first half of 2020.

The apparent reduction in spot trading volume on centralized exchanges, however, has been balanced by a significant increase in trading volume on decentralized exchange platforms.

Q2 2020 saw an increase of 56.1 percent in trading volume on DEX platforms, with decentralized exchanges such as Uniswap V1 experiencing an increase of 152.4 percent.

Bitfinex Embroiled in Court Case Over Mishandled Client Funds

The reduction in major centralized crypto exchange volume is driven, in part, by continuous hacks and mishandling of user capital. Earlier this week, a New York State appeals court ruled that the exchange must face claims that it hid the loss of commingled client and corporate funds.

Companies related to the Bitfinex exchange platform are accused of hiding over $800 million in both client and corporate funds.