Informed Crypto News
US government prepares victim notification in Bitfinex hack
Headline U.S. government prepares victim notification in Bitfinex Hack, published at 5.46 p.m. UTC, October 9, 2024, on protos.com. A United States District Judge has approved the government's motion for order authorizing alternative notification procedures in the case of the funds recovered from Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan from the Bitfinex Hack. This approval will allow the U.S. to post a notification about the case on the Department of Justice's DOJ Large Cases website out of an abundance of caution so that individuals who could potentially raise claims have an opportunity to do so. However, the U.S. government also notes that it is not aware of any person who qualifies as a victim beyond perhaps Bitfinex. Subheading the Bitfinex Hack Haircut, this case centers around funds recovered from Lichtenstein and Morgan after they pleaded guilty to laundering the proceeds of the 2016 hack. The hack is one of the largest thefts of Bitcoins ever, and in response, Bitfinex haircut many customer accounts, replacing the funds in their accounts with a special BFX token representing the losses. The consent order specifically claims that Bitfinex represented to the U.S. government that Ifinex Inc. allocated the losses from the hack across all customer accounts. This resulted in an approximately 36% reduction in account value across all accounts. However, this appears not to be the full truth. Zane Tackett, a former Bitfinex executive, has previously acknowledged on X, formerly Twitter, that Coinbase did not receive the same haircut as other accounts on the platform. This comment from Tackett confirmed earlier reporting from Nathaniel Popper. Protos reached out to Bitfinex for comment on this apparent discrepancy, but it did not respond before publication. This recording was AI-generated. Get more crypto news at protos.com.