Victims claim $3.6 billion in Bitcoin profits recovered from Bitfinex hack

Now the US government has recovered most of the bitcoin stolen from Bitfinex in 2016. Accordingly, more and more organizations and individuals are trying to claim it as their property.

The Justice Department has reportedly seized 94,636 BTC from a New York couple accused of laundering huge amounts of money from the hack.

Fearing a worst-case scenario, Twitter is being inundated with arguments that the US government is now holding this huge bag of Bitcoin and could sell it, crashing the recent bull markets. However, the assets actually belong to Bitfinex and it needs to be determined who owned them at the time of the hack more than five years ago.

The $3.6 billion worth of bitcoins seized accounted for about 80% of all funds stolen in the hack, for a total of $4.5 billion.

Who Wants Bitcoin?

On Feb. 10, Bloomberg reported that cryptocurrency fraud attorneys were being inundated with invitations from people demanding large sums of money, or part of it.

Attorney David Silver said he received “dozens of invitations” from people who lost money in the 2016 stock market hack.

“The world has changed dramatically since 2016 and people will be asking for these new found bitcoins.”

In addition, Justice Department officials said they intend to set up a process for victims to reclaim the stolen cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin was trading for around $600 at the time of the Bitfinex hack in August 2016. Since then, it’s up 7,200%. Therefore, there could be a large number of new crypto millionaires if they actually get a refund.

$30 million reimbursement

At the time, Bitfinex had spread more than 30% of losses across all customer accounts. The exchange created and issued BFX tokens to users at a rate of 1 coin for 1 dollar lost. All of these tokens were either redeemed within 8 months or exchanged for iFinex shares, according to the report.

Bitfinex is also creating another token called the Recovery Right Token (RRT) that will be used for reimbursement when recovering stolen assets.

“According to Bitfinex, there are currently 30 million RRT tokens. That could result in chargebacks of up to $30 million.”

The exchange also plans to use some of the recovered funds to purchase and destroy LEO tokens created in 2019.

Some customers do not agree with this. For example, a San Francisco resident claims he wants his BTC back:

“It was my bitcoin they took from my multi-signature wallet. I want my bitcoins back.”

Kyle Roche of Roche Freedman LLP commented that much will depend on the user agreement Bitfinex clients had with the company in 2016. Conditions were not strictly enforced.

This process can be lengthy, and it can take years for anyone to get their coins back.

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