Hacker returns $19 million in U.S. government cryptocurrency… approximately 88% of the damage amount

[블록미디어 이제인 기자] Pinbold reported on the 25th (local time) that the U.S. government returned most of the cryptocurrency assets stolen from hackers and moved them to new wallets.

According to the article, the previous day, about $20 million worth of cryptocurrency was stolen from a government-related wallet. However, on October 25, $19.3 million, or about 88% of the hacked assets, was returned, according to on-chain data shared by Arkham Intelligence. It was confirmed that the US government immediately transferred the returned assets to a new wallet.

This incident was recorded as one of several recent high-value hacking incidents in which hackers voluntarily returned funds. Previously, in May, there was a case where a hacker returned $71 million worth of cryptocurrency to a phishing victim, drawing attention.

In this hack, the hackers appear to have attempted to quickly launder funds. According to Arkham Data, the hackers moved $1.25 million in Tether (USDT) and $5.5 million in USD Coin (USDC) from the decentralized finance (DeFi) platform Aave, and later exchanged approximately $13.7 million worth of aUSDC and Transferred $446,000 of Ethereum (ETH) to a new wallet.

Additionally, the hackers transferred approximately $320,000 worth of Ethereum to various exchanges and dispersed $80,000 into small wallets. In this process, opinions are being raised that the use of platforms such as Coinbase contrasts with the U.S. government’s stance on cryptocurrency.

Cryptocurrency transactions involving U.S. government-linked wallets. Source: Arkham Intelligence

The assets affected this time correspond to those seized by the U.S. government in the 2016 Bitfinex hack. Ilya Lichtenstein and his wife, Heather Morgan, who led the hacking at the time, are scheduled to be sentenced in November. They stole 120,000 bitcoins at the time, which is equivalent to about $8 billion in current market value.

Cryptocurrency analyst Ergo BTC pointed out security vulnerabilities and lack of consistency in Bitfinex’s seized asset management document. Ergo said there were inconsistencies between documents and governing bodies, and that the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) had not officially reported the transfer of hacked Ethereum addresses.

Ergo also revealed that 74 BTC reportedly seized and 3100 BTC used in related transactions had already been spent, pointing out the discrepancy between the reported amount of seized assets and their actual on-chain movements. This suggests that some Bitfinex seized assets are not completely safe and highlights the need for increased security.

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$20 million stolen from US government wallet