Bitfinex Offers $336M To Hackers If They Return Stolen Bitcoin

Cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex is offering a reward worth up to $400 million to anyone who can connect it to the hackers who stole 119,755 Bitcoins from the company in August 2016. The exchange is also offering the hackers a reward if they voluntarily return the stolen Bitcoins, worth $1.3 billion in current prices.

The exchange, one of the oldest in the world, admitted the incident was a dark chapter in its history and this initiative is their latest effort to obtain the stolen funds.

Bitfinex said any person who connects the company with the hackers would receive 5% of the total funds recovered at current market values. The reward could be in equivalent assets or funds as agreed upon by both parties. If the hackers return the stolen funds, they would be entitled to 25% of the total recovered amount. “All payment will be classified as the cost of recovery of stolen property,” Bitfinex wrote in a blog post.

The exchange said the hackers must first confirm that they are the ones who stole the funds by transferring 1 Satoshi (1 Sats or 0.00000001 BTC) from one of the identified wallets where the Bitcoins are currently stored to another wallet the company would specify. Bitfinex said they would ensure the privacy of the hackers' identities.

If all the Bitcoins are fully recovered, minus the 27 BTC recovered in 2019, Bitfinex is giving approximately $403 million in reward for this program. From that reward, $336 million will be given to hackers.

On Aug. 12, 2016, hackers managed to breach Bitfinex’s systems and made 2,072 unauthorized transactions, siphoning out Bitcoins which at the time was worth $70 million. The news caused the market to panic, causing Bitcoin’s price to slump to $560.

In 2019, U.S. authorities helping with the case managed to retrieve 27 BTC and returned it to the exchange. But the stolen funds are moving again, as revealed by blockchain transactions that are publicly viewable. From July 25 to Aug. 2, $51 million worth of Bitcoins stolen from BitFinex were transferred to unknown wallets.

It remains to be seen whether Bitfinex could manage to retrieve the funds this time, since it offered something similar in 2016 when the exchange’s then-Community Chief Zane Tacket said they would reward 5% of the recovered funds to anyone with information leading to the retrieval of the funds.