It’s the first time a Bitcoin wallet has taken off since August of 2017. The owner of the wallet sent 10,000 Bitcoins to two different wallets. Wallet-to-wallet transfers from major crypto investors isn’t an incredibly interesting phenomenon, but there’s a “plot twist” to it. The wallet in question belongs to an old crypto exchange called BTC-e, which the FBI closed. Here are the details…
Bitcoin wallets linked to BTC-e take action
According to blockchain analysis, a wallet address linked to the currently inactive crypto exchange BTC-e has been activated. It made its biggest transaction since August 2017 on Wednesday. It sent a total of 10,000 BTC ($167 million) to two unknown wallets. The first person to draw attention to the development in question came from cryptocurrency investor Sergey Mendeleev. Blockchain analysis firm Crystal Blockchain, which received intelligence from Mendeleev, then revealed the analysis.
One of the wallets that received 3,500 BTC forwarded 300 BTC to another wallet. This amount was later split into several other wallets. The other wallet held the rest of the funds. BTC-e was founded in 2011, as we have also reported as Kriptokoin.com. Then in 2017 it was shut down by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on money laundering allegations. By the time it was shut down, it had processed an estimated $9 billion in transactions.
BTC-e manager arrested
BTC-e’s director, Alexander Vinnik, was arrested by the US Department of Justice in 2017. BTC-e’s crypto exchange Mt. He faced allegations that he facilitated the laundering of funds obtained from the Gox hack. Vinnik was arrested in Greece. Vinnik was sentenced to five years in prison in France for money laundering in 2020 before being extradited to the United States that same year.
Mt. Gox was once the largest Bitcoin exchange in the world. In 2014 it represented more than 70 percent of global Bitcoin trading volume. It collapsed that year after it was hacked for 850,000 Bitcoins, which equated to about $500 million at the time. Nobuaki Kobayashi, who oversees the firm’s plan to bail out its clients, reached out to creditors in July. He stated that customers and creditors would receive 137,000 Bitcoins worth roughly $2.8 billion at the time. At the time, a pullback in Bitcoin price caused concern.
CryptoQuant CEO warns
Of the total amount sent, 9,950 BTC is thought to still be in personal wallets, with the rest being transported through intermediaries before going to four deposit addresses on two major exchanges. Ki Young Ju, co-founder and CEO of blockchain analysis firm Cryptoquant, also confirmed the findings, stating that 0.6 percent of the funds were sent to exchanges and could represent sell-side liquidity.
Hey @hitbtc. You should suspend this account for suspicious activity; here's the wallet address.https://t.co/2pdHZ2ubEY
— Ki Young Ju (@ki_young_ju) November 24, 2022
In a tweet dated November 24, Young Ju shared footage of the transfer highlighting that BTC has been in the wallet for over seven years. Young Ju also mentioned that 65 BTC was transferred to the crypto exchange HitBTC. It urged them to suspend the account for suspicious activity.
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