Glossary
Bitfinex Hack (2016)
The August 2016 breach of Bitfinex's BitGo-secured multi-sig hot wallets — ~119,756 BTC stolen, partially recovered by the US DOJ in February 2022.
On August 2, 2016, attackers exploited the multi-sig architecture between Bitfinex and BitGo to drain approximately 119,756 BTC (~$72M at the time, valued in the billions today). Bitfinex socialized the loss to all customers via a 36% haircut and issued the BFX token (later converted to LEO) as a recovery instrument.
In February 2022 the US DOJ announced the arrest of Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan for laundering the stolen funds, recovering ~94,000 BTC. The recovery represented the largest financial seizure in DOJ history. Bitfinex subsequently received a portion of the recovered funds.