Bitfinex exchange froze over $ 850,000 in ransomware bitcoins

The Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange froze 96 BTC (about $860,000 at the current rate) that were sent toplatform by cybercriminals using a ransomware program. This was done by order of the High Court of London, writes New Money Review.

An unnamed company became a victim of ransomwareon behalf of which the insurance company paid offenders 109.25 BTC (about $ 950,000). Some of these funds were converted to fiat and turned out to be inaccessible for further tracking, the remaining 96 BTC, as Chainalysis established, were sent to the address belonging to Bitfinex.

After paying the required ransom, the victimthe company also went to court, which decided to freeze the coins on Bitfinex. The decision was adopted in December and published on January 17.

According to the publication, this is the first time that the High Court of London considered Bitcoin as property.

It is noteworthy that initially Bitfinex and itsiFinex's parent company acted as defendants. However, representatives of Bitfinex said that the exchange assisted in the discovery of assets and is no longer accused of any crime.

“As far as we know, the plaintiff’s attention is no longer directed to Bitfinex. Bitfinex is a completely innocent party involved in this offense. ”— Bitfinex stated

By order of the court, Bitfinex was supposed to transfer to the court the data of the attacker before January 18, but whether this was done is not reported.

Recall that in October last year, a German programmer hacked the Muhstik ransomware virus distributor server after paying 0.09 BTC to restore access to files.