Bitfinex wallet hacker returns most of the $20 million back to US gov’t

The malicious actor who drained a United States government wallet of approximately $20 million on Oct. 24, containing seized funds from the 2016 Bitfinex hack, returned $19.3 million to the government wallet less than 24 hours later.

According to Arkham Intelligence, several wallets controlled by the hacker returned the funds to the US government wallet, beginning with the characters “0xc9E.” At the time of this writing, roughly 88% of the funds have been returned.

Onchain data shows the hacker returned approximately 2,412 Ether 
ETH
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$2,472.44
, 7,200 USD Coin 
USDC
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$1.00
and $13.2 million in Aave-staked USDC (aUSDC). Blockchain sleuth ZackXBT noted that the returned funds do not include the approximately $700,000 the hacker sent to instant exchanges.

The identity of the hacker and the motivation behind the attack are not currently known, but the incident reflects a growing trend of hacks and exploit…