531–540 of 901 posts
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The cryptographic keys were stored on a cloud storage device. Law enforcement agencies gained access to these keys while executing a search warrant and used them move the funds. So by this logic, the government is now the rightful owner of these funds.
Correct. This is why crypto, at least in its current form, must fail. In the crypto world possession is 10/10ths of the law.
Shouldn't all true crypto believers hate this news? It's the government trying to enforce their opinion of who should own those Bitcoins, thereby taking power away from the owner that the network has decided on, which would be "whoever has the cryptographic keys".
What crypto believers should really hate is the fact that with a warrant, the government can potentially get at your private keys. That'd be an interesting problem for crypto to try to solve
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> ...Lichtenstein Email 2 was held at a U.S.-based provider that offered email as well as cloud storage services, among other products. Reads suspiciously like Gmail. Oh no. You stored your keys weakly encrypted on Google Drive?!
It wasn't necessarily weakly encrypted. The key may have been compromised, which I find more likely.
fwiw, it appears one of the named here is a YC Alum: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=il https://www.linkedin.com/in/unrealdutch/
Let's be fair to these individuals and not presume guilt. In the US, it's "innocent until proven guilty". Media is so quick to assume the person is guilty just because of an allegation.
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Hmm what work is that? Getting a visa? With that much cash I'd leave first (on a tourist visa) and figure the rest out later..
Americans don't need to apply for a Visa to visit most of the world. They just get one automatically on arrival. They could have just bought a Vanuatu passport with bitcoin (~$150k), then travelled there for a holiday. Leave the US with the US passport and arrive in Van with the Van passport. CHange their name in Vanuatu, then move to a 3rd country to settle permanently with a new name. Maybe change it one more time…
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> Seems like he could have done more to distance himself. Bitcoin's public ledger makes transactions into prosecution futures. This is why it's such a poor choice for revolutionaries and funding the marginalized. You leave a permanent indelible public record in posterity that will in the course of time be de-anonymized, automatically, and traced back to you.
Is it illegal to sell your artwork at an auction, and a criminal happens to be the one to buy it? I honestly don't know. is the onus on an artist or on an "auction house" to vet buyers. If post sale it turns out the money was fraudulent, does the artist need to pay it back? In crypto terms. You the artist simply put a NFT up for auction at OpenSea. You the scammer happened to purchase the artwork on OpenSea. However…
Maybe? IIRC, if you unknowingly buy stolen property, and they trace it to you, I think you have to surrender it to its rightful owner (without compensation from the police).
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> Seems like he could have done more to distance himself. Bitcoin's public ledger makes transactions into prosecution futures. This is why it's such a poor choice for revolutionaries and funding the marginalized. You leave a permanent indelible public record in posterity that will in the course of time be de-anonymized, automatically, and traced back to you.
Is it illegal to sell your artwork at an auction, and a criminal happens to be the one to buy it? I honestly don't know. is the onus on an artist or on an "auction house" to vet buyers. If post sale it turns out the money was fraudulent, does the artist need to pay it back? In crypto terms. You the artist simply put a NFT up for auction at OpenSea. You the scammer happened to purchase the artwork on OpenSea. However…
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Humans notoriously overestimate their competence and underestimate dangers they face. Combine that with a federal investigation that's going to be slow because 1) it's complex and 2) the feds will happily investigate you for years if it increases their chance of a conviction, and you've got a recipe for people who think they got away with it right up until the moment of arrest.
and underestimate the competence of governments/law enforcement.
When someone steals your bike, the cops could spend weeks investigating, interviewing witnesses, searching Craiglist, Facebook Marketplace, staking out the neighborhood for anyone riding the stolen bike, etc.
But they don't, because it's a bike. But steal $3.6 billion, you'll hold their attention for a bit!
"When she's not reverse-engineering black markets to think of better ways to combat fraud and cybercrime, she enjoys rapping and designing streetwear fashion." My online bio need some levelling-up. https://www.forbes.com/sites/heathermorgan/?sh=6e246df87f7d
Ilya Lichtenstein (YC S11) is the co-founder of YC-backed MixRank. Heather Morgan, his wife, is apparently a serial entrepreneur, investor, and "contributor" to Forbes.
She's also a rapper, and not a very good one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DIuPPmY9mw