A computer expert who stole bitcoin worth billions of dollars at current prices — and then spent years laundering some of the hacked cryptocurrency with help from his wife — has been sentenced to five years in prison.

A hacker has been sentenced to five years in a US prison for laundering the proceeds of one of the biggest ever cryptocurrency thefts. Ilya Lichtenstein pleaded guilty last year to hacking into the Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange in 2016 and stealing almost 20,000 bitcoin.

A New York technology entrepreneur was sentenced to five years in prison on Thursday after pleading guilty last year to laundering funds stolen from Bitfinex one of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges,