First off, I want to say that the Bitfinex team deserve enormous amount of respect for how they dealt with the hack: customers who lost funds in the August 2016 hack have now been made whole.

Last year, in the immediate aftermath of Bitfinex getting hacked for 120,000 BTC, I posted a thread here titled Why you should support the Bitfinex 36{88c91daedd271a990a10650c05d769cae2765e0603edf30ca95f18704e5748e8} haircut + token scheme instead of legal system liquidation procedure. It basically laid out why it would be irrational for Bitfinex customers to push for a bankruptcy resolution because lawyers, accountants, and consultant would eat up the potential repayments. Additionally, the existing team has an operational business that made repayment more likely if they were given a lifeline.

That was under 8 months ago. And now they've paid the whole lot back. They have exceeded the expectations of most market participants. The early FUDsters were screaming about an injunction or generally doubting their ability to repay

The financial media was saying the hack would hurt Bitcoin (we've doubled in price since then). and people were estimating it would take a lot longer to pay back. Far from taking multiple years, it took less than 8 months.

We just had Phil on the Teamspeak: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3ZbsU_be9A where he discussed the paying off 100{88c91daedd271a990a10650c05d769cae2765e0603edf30ca95f18704e5748e8} of the BFX tokens liability if you are interested to hear.

With no state intervention, Bitfinex was able to settle the liability mostly from customers converting the $ BFX token liability into equity in the exchange — about 80{88c91daedd271a990a10650c05d769cae2765e0603edf30ca95f18704e5748e8} of the $79 million ($74M stolen, $5M in reserve fund) or so — and also by paying down their "contingent legal reserves" fund they set aside to deal with any challenges to their recovery model.

But the other part is that they are just doing incredibe in BTC/USD volume compared to its competitors. Their operating profits were hitting record levels, it was as if the hack never happened.

This is a model for the community, when the government does not have to get involved and people of good character are running an exchange and make good on a really awful situation like the hack of 120,000 BTC back in August.

To those who were haters, FUDsters, or downright cynical about their prospects: give credit where it is due, they have honored their debt.