Arrested hacker claims he breached bitcoin exchange in 2015, police alert ED, CBI

A 26-year-old man, accused of several computer hacking crimes in India, has told Bengaluru police in a statement that he was involved in the first-ever hacking and theft of bitcoins from Bitfinex, the cyptocurrency exchange based in Hong Kong, in 2015 during his stay in the Netherlands.

Srikrishna Ramesh alias Sriki was arrested by the police in November 2020 in a drugs case relating to dark net.

The Bitfinex exchange was hacked twice – in 2015 and 2016 – and bitcoins stolen. While the 2015 hacking was a relatively smaller one, the August 2016 hacking resulted in theft of nearly 1,20,000 bitcoins, valued at around $72 million at the time and now worth around $7 billion. The second hacking is considered one of the biggest bitcoin heists ever.