Just as crypto investors and traders have been cashing in on the recent bullish run in the crypto market, BTC thieves moved about 3,897 BTC in 7 transactions within an hour. The bitcoins were said to have been stolen from Bitfinex in 2016, according to data retrieved from an advanced crypto tracker firm, Whales Alert, today.
🚨 1,430 #BTC (15,250,196 USD) transferred from #Coinbase to unknown wallet
— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) July 27, 2020
How easy is tracking BTCs? It should be noted that Bitcoin is not really anonymous because all BTCs transactions are kept permanently and publicly on the blockchain or ledger system, so it’s very easy for anyone to see the transactions and balances of any BTC address.
READ MORE: $30 billion worth of BTCs disappears forever
Data from Coinmarketcap showed at the time these reports were drafted, Bitcoin was trading around $10,768 with a market capitalization of about $199.2 billion.
Recall that in 2016, Zane Tackett, Director of Community & Product Development for Bitfinex, in a statement credited to Reuters disclosed that 119,756 bitcoins had been stolen from users’ accounts.
“The bitcoin was stolen from users’ segregated wallets,” he said.
READ MORE: Within 72 hours USDC Treasury transfers over 50,000,000 USDC to wallets
Bitfinex added that it had reported the theft to security agencies and was in liaison with blockchain analytic companies to track the stolen BTCs.
What these means: Blockchain security and security agencies have flagged the BTC wallets containing the stolen BTCS and making it very difficult to move the 119,756 BTC without being noticed.
