The 120,000 Bitcoin Bitfinex Heist to be Became a Netflix Documentary

The world of cryptocurrencies, particularly in its earlier years, had a fame of being the taking part in floor of hackers and numerous malicious entities. And whereas this has modified to an enormous diploma previously few years and the sector obtained huge recognition and regulatory readability, the ghosts of its previous stay.

One of the vital notorious Bitcoin hacks passed off again in 2016 when somebody stole roughly 120,000 BTC from one of many largest cryptocurrency exchanges – Bitfinex. Now, given every little thing that has occurred since Netflix needs to show it right into a documentary.

Let’s dive in.

It’s 2016, Bitfinex Will get Hacked for 120,000 BTC

Again in August 2016, the cryptocurrency world, albeit a lot… a lot smaller on the time, skilled one in every of its main shakedowns when information broke out that Bitfinex noticed 119.756 BTC being stolen from its platform. Again then, the quantity was value roughly $66 million.

Though the Mt. Gox hack was proportionally larger, this stays one of the critical monetary crimes in trendy historical past, given the meteoric rise of BTC’s worth up to now. On the time of this writing, the 120K BTC is at present value over $5 billion.

In any case, the theft sparked huge confusion and frustration. The supply of the vulnerability gave the impression to be in the way in which the alternate structured its accounts, utilizing the BTC pockets supplier BitGo which added yet another layer of safety for the transactions.

Quick Ahead to 2022: The US DoJ Arrests a Couple

Just some days in the past, on February eighth, CryptoPotato reported that the US authorities, within the face of the Division of Justice, arrested Ilya Lichtenstein (34) and Heather Morgan (31). The DoJ accused them of conspiring to launder 119,754 BTC after an attacker stole them by over 20,000 unauthorized transactions from Bitfinex within the above heist.

Now, an important clarification right here is that the couple isn’t accused of really orchestrating the hack however slightly of trying to launder the cash stolen by it. This, amongst some downright ridiculous circumstances, led many to consider that they aren’t liable for the hack.

Talking of weird occasions, a easy instance could be that the authorities declare they discovered the personal keys to the BTC fortune saved on a, get this, a cloud service. That’s proper – the accused saved the personal keys to 120K BTC on what might simply have been Google Cloud. To the uninitiated, conserving your personal keys on an offline medium always is likely one of the (if not the) most vital safety ideas that anybody moving into the sector of cryptocurrencies ought to observe. For some extra safety suggestions, check out our in depth information.

All issues thought of, the drama surrounding the occasions appears to have caught the eye of the streaming behemoth – Netflix.

Netflix Desires to Flip it right into a Documentary

A press launch from February eleventh reads that:

Netflix has ordered a documentary collection a few married couple’s alleged scheme to launder billions of {dollars} value of stolen cryptocurrency within the largest legal monetary crime case in historical past.

To be honest, that’s positively not the “largest legal monetary crime case in historical past.” As we talked about above, the Mt. Gox hack noticed BTC value round six occasions that stolen.

In any case, the documentary is about to be directed and produced by Chris Smith and Nick Bilton.