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August 2, 2016Crises & controversyFailures & lossesdocumented

Bitfinex loses nearly 120,000 BTC

A security breach removed approximately 119,756 BTC from Bitfinex customer wallets and forced the exchange to halt operations.

Bitfinex distributed the loss across accounts and issued BFX tokens representing customer claims, later redeeming or converting them. U.S. authorities recovered a large portion of the stolen bitcoin years later and prosecuted the laundering case.