According to WhaleAlert, a Twitter bot that tracks large transactions, a total of 11,325 dormant Bitcoins have been activated after 7.7 years.
The whole sum has been broken up into smaller fractions and distributed to 689 different addresses.
Whale Alert states that the massive amount of reactivated Bitcoin might be linked to the Cryptsy theft.
In 2016, the now-defunct exchange announced that it had become insolvent due to a hack that allegedly occurred in July 2014. Prior to that, Cryptsy customers started facing withdrawal delays en masse.
Cryptsy CEO and founder Paul Vernon was then slapped with a class-action lawsuit by disgruntled customers, who accused the Boynton Beach businessman of absconding with millions of dollars worth of crypto. In September 2017, a federal judge in Florida ruled that Crypsty had indeed lost 11,325 Bitcoins, but the court fell short of identifying the thief.
Alex DovbnyaThis January, Vernon was charged with wire fraud, money laundering, and tax evasion by the U.S. Department of Justice. He allegedly stole more than $1 million from the exchange’s wallet and then transferred the money to his own bank account. After moving to China in 2016, Vernon hacked into the exchange himself, stole its database containing customers’ funds, and then got rid of it in order to hide the theft.
Some Twitter users are speculating that the U.S. authorities have managed to freeze and recover the stolen funds since the numbers seem to add up. This explains a series of back-to-back transfers that took place on Tuesday.
Arman Shirinyan
Vladislav Sopov
Dan Burgin
U.Today Editorial Team