The Us Government Conducts Bitcoin Transfer Worth $922 Million.
- Posted on February 29, 2024 10:36 PM
- Cryipto News
- 173 Views
The United States government transferred $922 million worth of Bitcoin from two crypto wallets that held assets seized from the Bitfinex exchange in 2016. This move coincided with Bitcoin crossing the $60,000 mark for the first time in over two years on February 28th. Bitcoin reached $62,500 with a 5.52% increase within 24 hours, following a more than 20% gain the previous week.
According to data from Arkham Intelligence, a test transfer of a single Bitcoin worth $60,200 was initially conducted on February 28th. Subsequently, one of the wallets purportedly belonging to the US government executed three more transfers, including 2,817 Bitcoins worth $172.74 million, 0.01 Bitcoin worth $613.35, and 12,267 Bitcoins worth $748.46 million.
Following the theft of approximately 119,754 Bitcoins (BTC) from the Bitfinex platform in 2016, the U.S. government seized these funds. The value of this amount exceeds $7.4 billion in today's terms.
These significant transfer transactions occurred just after hacker Ilya Lichtenstein detailed in a Washington court how he orchestrated one of the world's largest Bitcoin thefts. This confession came the day after he was tried for stealing and laundering $4.5 billion worth of Bitcoin from Bitfinex.
According to Bloomberg, Lichtenstein admitted in front of the jury on February 27 that he had infiltrated Bitfinex's systems for several months and also hacked into accounts on other exchanges like Coinbase and Kraken.
Lichtenstein and his rapper wife, Heather Morgan (stage name Razzlekhan), were arrested in February 2022. At that time, the U.S. government claimed that the couple had laundered $4.5 billion worth of stolen Bitcoin, marking it as the largest financial seizure in U.S. history with $3.6 billion in confiscated funds. The government later seized an additional $475 million worth of Bitcoin on August 3.
In August 2023, Lichtenstein and his wife were convicted of money laundering in connection with the Bitfinex hack. It has been reported that Amazon has started production of a film about the Bitfinex attackers, with the screenplay inspired by a 2022 New York Times article that dubbed the couple as "Bitcoin's Bonnie and Clyde."
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