Does this mean users who lost everything on bitfinex will be contacted and could possibly recover their coins? Can you imagine waking up to realize you are rich because the feds seized the coins and are returning to you.
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Feds arrest couple, seize $3.6B in hacked Bitcoin funds
201–210 of 901 posts
Re: Feds arrest couple, seize $3.6B in hacked Bitcoin funds
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, the police had a search warrant, so the police could have found them if they had had them in their possession anyway. Sure, they could have destroyed them, losing the money but maybe not getting arrested?
vitalik (ethereum founder) used an interesting system. He split the key in 2. Wrote both on paper. Gave 1 paper to family and kept the other. Even if the police raid him (hypothetically), they cannot raid the houses of his family and friends at the same time This way the police or anybody else cannot get your private key.
The police wouldn't have to raid the family members, they'd likely give up what they know immediately, to avoid become accessories to whatever crime the police were alleging.
Re: Feds arrest couple, seize $3.6B in hacked Bitcoin funds
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
So, tornado only takes Eth. They could have used something like wbtc, to bridge the bitcoin to Ethereum and then swap to eth to run it through tornado. But wbtc is a custodial wrapping service that would require kyc. There are other wrapping services that don't, but they have nowhere near that much liquidity on Ethereum to execute the trade to eth needed to run it through tornado. The other problem is that tornado ha…
Good points! Thorchain (a non-custodial service) claims 1.9B total swap volume. So, while not viable today for billions of dollars, the Bitcoin -> Thorchain -> Tornado Cash pathway seems to be viable for smaller amounts. Which doesn't necessarily bode well for recovering stolen bitcoin (and other crypto) in the future. A thief still has to figure out how to convert crypto to fiat. But I am assuming that there are jur…
Once you have crypto in a clean account, what's the problem with providing KYC to convert it to fiat through any exchange?
Re: Feds arrest couple, seize $3.6B in hacked Bitcoin funds
#204Should I expect price drop once feds start to sell it? Or they'll just destroy the keys (keeping the money invested forever).
According to the article it’s up to a judge on how the funds are dispersed. It seems to lean towards the bitcoin being returned to their rightful owners.
It worked out well for the owners assuming it is returned.
Re: Feds arrest couple, seize $3.6B in hacked Bitcoin funds
#205Sometimes I wonder what the chances are that certain (highly privileged) staff at Google (or other similar data storage or e-mail companies) could run a query across Google Drive looking for a specific public key. Much like a malware scanner, just looking for "a key", just to see if there is an account matching. Unofficially, of course. A rogue employee perhaps. And, what if, in such a case, the employee (in the best…
I think the perp encrypted the file themselves before uploading to Google cloud (or wherever). The encryption was not provided by the platform.
Re: Feds arrest couple, seize $3.6B in hacked Bitcoin funds
#206> “After the execution of court-authorized search warrants of online accounts controlled by Lichtenstein and Morgan, special agents obtained access to files within an online account controlled by Lichtenstein,” the press release said. “Those files contained the private keys required to access the digital wallet that directly received the funds stolen from Bitfinex, and allowed special agents to lawfully seize and rec…
3) they made the big blunder of keeping their private keys in their online account. Most likely a txt file in google drive. That is such a silly blunder. Without the private keys, the police has zero proof of anything. They could have made a hundred excuses for how they got money in their bank account, as long as the police didn't have the private keys. Who keeps their private keys in an online account?
Not necessarily. If they can spend stolen $, presumably that may be enough to persuade a jury they own it.
Re: Feds arrest couple, seize $3.6B in hacked Bitcoin funds
#207It seems that Tornado Cash ( https://tornado.cash/ ) could have been used to launder the funds. I wonder if: - Laundering happened before Tornado Cash existed, so Tornado Cash was not used - They used something like Tornado Cash, but the funds were still traceable
Are you using Tornado Cash to launder money?
Talking about someone laundering money doesn't mean that they are. You are assuming guilt without any cause.
Talking about mixers (such as tornado_cash) is a worthy discussion on a post about laundering cryptocurrencies.
Re: Feds arrest couple, seize $3.6B in hacked Bitcoin funds
#208Probably stupid question: Why not just exchange it to zcash or monero or some other coin that hides transaction details? Then you can send it to a new wallet; theoretically 100% untraceably. Is this not a valid approach?
The transaction from BTC to Monero is traceable.
Re: Feds arrest couple, seize $3.6B in hacked Bitcoin funds
#209should have used monero
Re: Feds arrest couple, seize $3.6B in hacked Bitcoin funds
#210Sometimes I wonder what the chances are that certain (highly privileged) staff at Google (or other similar data storage or e-mail companies) could run a query across Google Drive looking for a specific public key. Much like a malware scanner, just looking for "a key", just to see if there is an account matching. Unofficially, of course. A rogue employee perhaps. And, what if, in such a case, the employee (in the best…
this would be trivial to code and could search for one of the bip 39 dictionary words. github key thieves do this already.