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Hacker's remorse? 🕵️
Did the U.S. government really get hacked for $20 million worth of seized crypto? Most of the funds were returned, but major questions remain.
Andrew Hayward
October 25, 2024
📝 What you need to know
It’s surely been a stressful 24 hours for whoever oversees the United States government’s crypto wallets holding seized criminal assets.
On Thursday, over $20 million worth of assets seized in relation to the 2016 Bitfinex exchange hack suddenly were drained from a U.S. government wallet, as flagged by Arkham Intelligence, with funds quickly dispersed to exchanges and swapped for stablecoins. It looked bad—and on-chain analysts said it appeared to be theft.
But then on Friday morning, the vast majority of the funds (about $19.3 million worth) suddenly came flooding back into the wallet. Soon after, they were sent to a new wallet, presumably as the U.S. government attempted to better secure the coins.
Was it a white-hat attack from an ethical hacker, and the U.S. offered a sliver of the funds as a bounty for a safe return? That’s still unclear, and the Department of Justice has yet to comment or reply to our requests.
😂 Meme of the Day
"The SEC can’t submit new evidence or ask us to produce more. Meaning, there won’t be all the drama we had in the litigation when we fought over documents."
