US prosecutors have asked a federal judge to authorize the return of 94,000 Bitcoin stolen during a 2016 hack of the cryptocurrency Bitfinex, according to court documents.

Prosecutors explained that for the specific crimes at issue in this case, there are no "victims. "However, the court has the authority to order voluntary compensation as part of the defendants' guilty pleas," they added. The assets should be returned to Bitfinex in crypto form, as goods.

Following this news, the LEO token, a debt token issued by the exchange following the hack to offset customer losses, rose. Bitfinex announced in 2022 that, in the event of a refund of stolen Bitcoin, the company would sell 80 percent of its recovered net funds to buy back and destroy the outstanding UNUS SED LEO tokens. This would mean the exchange could sell about $7.5 billion worth of Bitcoin over an 18-month period to compensate affected customers.

Reminder: Bitfinex has publicly communicated that it intends to sell 80% of the seized BTC to buy and burn LEO over an 18-month period.

That's roughly 75,709 BTC ($7.5bn).

Current LEO market cap: $8.96bn, a 19% premium to the value of the BTC.https://t.co/U1DtbnnFrR
— Vetle Lunde (@VetleLunde) January 15, 2025

In August 2023, married couple Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan confessed to stealing about 120,000 Bitcoin from Bitfinex. Authorities had arrested them in February 2022 while attempting to launder the funds. Lichtenstein was sentenced to five years in prison in November 2024.

If the seized funds actually return to Bitfinex, the U.S. government's Bitcoin stockpile will continue to dwindle. Recently, the Department of Justice (DOJ) received permission to liquidate approximately 70,000 BTC originally seized from the Dark Web marketplace Silk Road.

Such a sale would further reduce Donald Trump's planned Bitcoin reserve. Currently, the U.S. government still owns 198,109 Bitcoin. If liquidation occurs in either case, the United States would own less Bitcoin than Britain.