DOJ moves 94,636 BTC from Bitfinex hack (pre-announcement)

On February 1, 2022, the largest on-chain movement of dormant coins in modern history quietly occurred. 198.7 million BTC·days were destroyed in a single day, sixty-six standard deviations above the trailing baseline. Most of the moved coins had been sitting untouched since the 2016 Bitfinex hack — over five years of accumulated dormancy.

On February 8, 2022, the DOJ publicly announced the seizure of 94,636 BTC from Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan, then the largest financial seizure in DOJ history. The arrests had already happened; the keys had already been controlled; the coins had already been moved to DOJ-controlled wallets a week prior.

The pattern — extreme CDD on the date the keys actually changed hands, news cycle catching up roughly a week later — has now repeated several times in chainquery's record. The chain tells you when the custody changed. The press tells you when the public gets to know.