In 2016, the Bitcoin (BTC) country was shocked by a large-scale hack at the crypto exchange Bitfinex, which was founded in 2012. It was one of the largest crypto exchanges at the time and so it caused a major shock to the market. At the time, malicious people made off with an enormous capital of 119,756 BTC. The crypto exchange has now announced that it will return a small portion of the stolen funds to the victims.
Recover stolen crypto
Last Thursday, Bitfinex released a blog know that it will recover a total of $312,219.71 in cash and 6,917 bitcoin cash (BCH) from 2016 duped customers. progress.
The total pile of stolen assets was worth $ 72 million in 2016, but this has now risen to a whopping $ 3.6 billion.
The Justice Department announced in February last year that it had seized a large portion of the stolen assets and arrested two people on charges of conspiracy to launder the stolen crypto. It was also the ministry’s largest-ever financial seizure.
Bitfinex received the assets from the US Department of Homeland Security, which was instrumental in seizing the stolen assets and prosecuting the perpetrators.
Bitfinex crypto recovery plan
After the hack, the Hong Kong-based exchange devised a plan with the aim of recovering the losses suffered by affected users. So-called IOU (“I Owe You”) tokens, called BFX tokens, were introduced to compensate victims. These tokens represent a promise from the exchange to pay back the lost money over time. Each BFX token was equal to one US dollar.
Eventually, Bitfinex announced that all outstanding BFX tokens had been fully redeemed, meaning all those affected have been refunded. In addition to these BFX tokens, the exchange also released its so-called ‘Recovery Right Tokens’ (RRTs) out. These tokens were designed to provide users with a possible additional recovery should stolen funds be recovered in the future.
The tokens therefore essentially serve as a claim against a portion of the recovered funds. Owners of these RRT tokens can exchange them 1:1 for 1 dollar in recovered money.
In the announcement, Bitfinex clarifies that the recovered amount is not enough to redeem all RRT tokens.