10,000 BTC Withdrawn from BTC-e Wallet; Part Sent to HitBTC and MEXC
November 23, an unknown moved 10,000 BTC ($165 million at the time of withdrawal) from a wallet associated with the BTC-e cryptocurrency exchange. The transaction was first noticed by the CEO of Indefibank, Sergey Mendeleev.
The amount was split between two addresses. One of them received 6,500 BTC, and these funds did not move further.
The second received 3,500 BTC. Later, this amount was divided into smaller transactions among various wallets.
According to Crystal Blockchain’s product development director Kirill Chikhhradze, 65 BTC from these funds were transferred to the address belonging to the HitBTC exchange.
The ownership of other wallets could not yet be established.
The transfer was the largest for the sender’s address since September 2017, when another 10,000 BTC was withdrawn from it.
In the evening, movements of funds continued. A series of 11 transactions of 1.8 BTC (about $30,000) were sent to a wallet tied to the MEXC exchange. The wallet’s ownership was confirmed by Crystal Blockchain.
According to Chainalysis, active movements on the BTC-e (WEX) wallets began about a month ago. On October 26, both platforms sent small amounts of bitcoin to the Russian payment service WebMoney. On November 11, BTC-e made a test payment from its wallet, and on November 21 indirectly transferred about 100 BTC to an unnamed exchange.
Of all funds withdrawn in recent days, about 9,950 BTC remain in private wallets, while the rest have moved through a chain of intermediaries to four deposit addresses on two major exchanges. In the case of Exchange No. 1, depicted in the diagram, Chainalysis analysts suggested that this may be a Russian platform that could have served as an intermediary to launder BTC-e’s assets.
According to Mendeleev, the current withdrawal could be driven by Alexander Vinnik or Alexey Bilyuchenko, who are currently in custody.
Biluchenko, who was the administrator of WEX (BTC-e’s successor), was detained in March 2022 in the Moscow region with suitcases of cash. He is suspected of embezzling the exchange’s assets. Police confiscated about 190 million rubles from the suspect.
According to data from the WEX user group, Biluchenko is currently in Moscow’s Matrosskaya Tishina prison.
Alexander Vinnik awaits trial in Santa Rita Jail in California. He is accused of laundering at least $4 billion through BTC-e. In the United States, Vinnik faces up to 55 years in prison.
On the day of his arrest, July 25, 2017, an unknown person withdrew 66,143 BTC from the BTC-e hot wallet to the Coinbase exchange address.
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