Making sense of the Bitfinex Bitcoin billions
It’s the Netflix script that wrote itself. A story so outlandish, it’s stunned the crypto community; an industry accustomed to apparent suicides in Spanish jail cells and nonfungible token auctions for dead rappers.
The plot involves the United States Department of Justice (DoJ), a crypto exchange with a checkered history, a rapper-cum-Forbes magazine writer, a voucher to buy a new PlayStation, an occasional magician and $4 billion worth of Bitcoin (BTC).
The alleged Bitfinex hack money launderers have kept the internet enraptured since the larger-than-life story emerged last week. It’s no wonder thatNetflix has actually announced that they will bring the story to life.
In essence, a zany rapper who advises companies on social engineering and tackling cybercriminals named Heather Morgan and her cybersecurity specialist husband Ilya Lichtenstein were caught trying to launder funds stolen from the 2016 Bitfinex hack. Funds were laundered via the purchase of games consoles, Uber rides and other gift vouchers.
Despite their nerdy credentials, according to the DoJ report, law enforcement gained access to the couple’s private keys through a cloud storage account. Yes, they kept their private keys to upwards of $3 billion in Bitcoin in the cloud.
But, with so many unanswered questions and bizarre circumstances, the news of the Bitfinex billions has left Twitter scrambling for puzzle pieces while armchair investigators have their work cut out for them, coming up with even more outlandish theories.
Amid wild theories and some questionable reporting, this article intends to lay out the established facts surrounding the Bitfinex hack and what it means now that the DoJ is now holding 90,000 Bitcoin.
The Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency
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