The US government has recently transferred approximately $606,000 in Bitcoin linked to the notorious Bitfinex hack to Coinbase Prime, as shown by blockchain data. This transfer follows earlier transactions made on March 3 and April 10, which were part of different cryptocurrency cases.
As of April 2026, federal wallets now hold a total of 328,361 BTC, amounting to an estimated $24 billion. The Bitfinex hack itself, which occurred on August 2, 2016, remains one of the most significant events in the cryptocurrency sector. During this infamous incident, hacker Ilya Lichtenstein exploited a weakness in Bitfinex’s multi-signature wallet technology, leading to the theft of more than 119,000 Bitcoin valued at roughly $72 million then. If we consider today’s Bitcoin value, estimated at $74,000 per coin, that amount could now fetch around $8.9 billion.
Following the 2016 breach, Lichtenstein, along with his wife, Heather Morgan, engaged in extensive efforts over five years to launder the stolen funds, utilizing intricate and multi-layered transactions to obscure their trail. In February 2022, law enforcement took significant action, seizing about 94,636 BTC after decrypting files in Lichtenstein’s cloud storage, which contained critical information including a spreadsheet outlining over 2,000 private keys. This breakthrough provided authorities direct access to nearly all the funds recovered from the hack.
In November 2024, Lichtenstein was sentenced to five years in prison, while Morgan received an 18-month sentence. By early 2025, federal court proceedings confirmed that the seized assets would be returned to Bitfinex as part of a restitution plan. Bitfinex, per its recovery strategy, intends to utilize these funds to fully reimburse all outstanding Recovery Right Tokens (RRT) and allocate at least 80% of the remaining net proceeds towards repurchasing and burning UNUS, SED, and LEO tokens. This plan underscores the company’s commitment to restoring investor confidence and recovering from one of the largest breaches in cryptocurrency history.