Worrying signs in Bitfinex's Hot wallets for Bitcoin and Ethereum

in #bitcoin6 years ago (edited)

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Created from these pics from pixabay pic1 pic2

Bitfinex say that there is a hiccup in their system and there is a backlog in withdraws. First I want to say that the strange transactions may be explained by the backlog, and in the eth wallet's case, an attempt to deal with it.

Firstly BTC

Here is links to the bitfinex cold and hot wallets.

The hot wallet has always just had money added to it and then was emptied minutes later, since the 4th of this month (4 days ago) this wallet has been filling up with the odd small withdrawal. It had never had more than 5,000 btc in it, and even then just for minutes, it now has >17,000 BTC ~ $260 million.

This is consistent with their claim of a backlog. But having this much in a hot wallet is very worrying.

Ethereum

For ethereum I am less sure what is going on and I would appreciate some help explaining it. Heres what I found

Lets start with what etherscan calls Bitfinex_Wallet1, as far as I can make out this functions as bitfinex's hot wallet. It usually has ~ 10,000ETH in it but like the bitcoin wallet it started to back up, until 2 days ago when it had ~ 225,395 eth. At which point it emptied it into this wallet.

The linked wallet is about 220 days old and has had previous interactions with known bitfinex wallets so seems to be in their control. It has been funding this new 2 day old wallet.

What would be really helpful is if people that have gotten an eth or an erc20 coin withdrawn from bitfinex in the last 2 days , can you check if it came from the last wallet I linked. As it seems to be acting as a hot wallet for eth and erc20.

Conclusion

When I started to write this I was very concerned, I am now only quite concerned. This 'evidence' seems to tally with bitfinex's explanation for what is happening.

Although I have tried to withdraw some DATA which I had on the site and while the site says the withdraw is complete the link to the txt is a dud. Will update if it goes through.

Update: the transaction changed to processing after 4 hours. Not a great sign that the transaction showed complete when it wasn't.

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It's like living in the wild wild West!

This is not going great for crypto

Could be argued that crypto is going so good that the eth and btc chains are clogged which is causing bitfinex withdrawal issues

finally seems like its working isn't it

the btc hot wallet is back to nearly empty which is the ideal case. But I am still waiting 2 days for my DATA withdraw. I am hearing that people are getting there eth withdraws, just taking a long time

huge amount of money pouring in from the investors may be that's why and the year ends so that may be the case

Thank you for all the information https://9blz.com/bitfinex-review/

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