More and more evidences are pointing out to the fact that the Bitfinex theft was indeed an inside job. The illusive founder of the exchange has now been identified as Raphael Nicolle, a French freelancer.
His LinkedIn profile, i.e. https://www.linkedin.com/in/raphaelnicolle/en, has been update lately to distance himself from the ownership of Bitfinex...
After a successful launch of Bitfinex, which I left in the capable hands of a good team of investors and experts, I continue my passion as an IT consultant and system administrator for my clients.
Though, a post in February 23, 2015 on BitcoinTalk shows that he was still representing Bitfinex - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=229438.msg10554709#msg10554709
One twitter profile of Raphael Nicolle was last active on August 10, 2014 - ~~~ embed:498582064674111488 ....another has recently been deleted - https://twitter.com/Raphael_optiso twitter metadata:cmFwaHltY2R1Y2t8fGh0dHBzOi8vdHdpdHRlci5jb20vcmFwaHltY2R1Y2svc3RhdHVzLzQ5ODU4MjA2NDY3NDExMTQ4OCAuLi4uYW5vdGhlciBoYXMgcmVjZW50bHkgYmVlbiBkZWxldGVkIC0gaHR0cHM6Ly90d2l0dGVyLmNvbS9SYXBoYWVsX29wdGlzb3w= ~~~
Most interestingly, Raphael Nicolle once tried to run a Ponzi on BitcoinTalk - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=109285.0
Moreover, on some occasion, he defended Trendon Shaver's blatant Ponzi...
Pirate's turns growth in demand for bitcoins (ie USD flows to bitcoins) into bitcoins profit. That's why he needs massive (at bitcoin scale) capital.
Now back to ponziiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
Source: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=94900.msg1098805#msg1098805
Though Bitfinex has claimed about an ongoing investigation about the 119,756 BTC heist, there is no proof for the same. On the contrary, they are planning to make up for the loss forcefully from user's fund.
This appears to be similar to how Mt. Gox happened. Mt. Gox was created by Jed McCaleb and was sold to Mark Karpeles. It is rumored that Mt. Gox hack was actually executed by Jed McCaleb, but Mark Karpeles, being the CEO suffered for it.
Here Raphael Nicolle is the original founder. But, before the heist, Jean-Louis van der Velde was made the CEO. Below are the details pointing to the fact that he is the CEO of Bitfinex now...
~~~ embed:724607826421653504 twitter metadata:Q29pbl9hbmRfUGVhY2V8fGh0dHBzOi8vdHdpdHRlci5jb20vQ29pbl9hbmRfUGVhY2Uvc3RhdHVzLzcyNDYwNzgyNjQyMTY1MzUwNHw= ~~~
https://www.linkedin.com/in/j-l-van-der-velde-26a24b6
https://tether.to/why-use-tether/
wow!!
Well, hacking/security issues these days are easily done from inside than outside.
Thanks for interesting info.
I upvote U