US Government Transfers $922 Million Worth Of Seized Bitcoin After Reaching $60,000 level

The United States government has moved a total of $922 million worth of Bitcoin (BTC) from two cryptocurrency wallets that hold the funds seized from Bitfinex in 2016. 

The BTC transfer happened on the same day when Bitcoin hit the $60,000 threshold yesterday, February 28. According to Arkham Intelligence data, the first test transfer shows 1 BTC amounting to $62,200 during the time of transfer. Then, another transfer was made shortly after worth 2,817 BTC equivalent to $172.4 million. The third transfer was worth 0.01 BTC equivalent to $613.35, and the fourth transfer was amounting to 12,267 BTC, equivalent to $748.46 million.

The U.S. government confiscated these funds way back in 2016 after Bitfinex was hacked for 119,754 BTC equivalent to over $4.5 billion at the time of hacking.

The seized Bitcoins were moved following Ilya Lichtenstein’s — a hacker who stole and laundered over $4.5 billion worth of BTC in 2016 from Bitfinex — appearance in Washington Court detailing how he organized one of the world’s largest Bitcoin heists. 

On February 7, Lichtenstein reportedly told the jury about having access to Bitfinex’s systems for several months while hacking individual accounts from other exchanges such as Kraken and Coinbase.

Lichtenstein along with his wife, Heather Morgan also known as Razzlekhan were arrested in February 2022. The couple was alleged by the US government for laundering $4.5 billion worth of hacked Bitcoin at the time which the government recovered $3.6 billion and is considered the largest financial seizure in history. On August 3 of the same year, the government was able to recover an additional $475 million worth of Bitcoin.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin (BTC) continues to soar high, currently trading at $62,570.58 showing a 5.95% increase in the last 24 hours. Total market capitalization also increased by 5.92% to $1.2 trillion.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR See More

Sophia Cruz

Financial Writer - Asian & European Desks

Sophia is an experienced writer, reporter and newsdesk member, mostly on the financial sectors. For the past 5 years Sophia has covered a wide variety of topics such as the financial markets, economics, technology, fin-tech and trading. Sophia has been a part of the FX Leaders team since 2017 and works on producing valuable content and information for traders of all levels of experience.

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