Amid the ongoing recovery of the cryptocurrency market, a wallet address linked to the US government that holds seized funds has been compromised by hackers. On October 25, 2024, blockchain intelligence firm Arkham Intelligence posted on X (formerly Twitter) that the US government’s crypto address had been breached, resulting in a loss of $20 million in assets.
US government $20 million crypto fund stolen
According to the data Arkham shared, the compromised $20 million held at the address was originally seized by hackers involved in the 2016 Bitfinex hack. These funds mainly consisted of stablecoins such as USDT, USDC, aUSD, and ETH. They were transferred from the US government-linked wallet address ‘0xc9E’ to the hacker’s address ‘0x3486’.
In 2016, hackers stole nearly $4.5 billion worth of cryptocurrencies. The US government later recovered most of this money and transferred it to the wallet address ‘0xc9E’, which was compromised today.
Hackers start laundering stolen money
Furthermore, the hackers have started laundering the money by converting it into Ethereum (ETH), making it harder to trace. In addition, Arkham noted in his post on
However, on October 9, 2024, the US government announced that Bitfinex was the only victim of the 2016 attack and was eligible for compensation of 120,000 BTC from the seized funds. With the recent compromise, concerns have arisen as to whether Bitfinex will receive the funds or whether authorities will need more time to resolve the issue.
Credit : coinpedia.org
