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Feds seized $311M in Bitcoin, then hacker stole it back

bloomberg.com

21–30 of 229 posts

Re: Feds seized $311M in Bitcoin, then hacker stole it back

#22
> The prosecutors accuse Harmon of a very unusual crime: remotely swiping Bitcoin...

As opposed to what, "locally" swiping Bitcoin?

> ... Bitcoin stored on a computer device the government had already seized in another case

Yeah that's your problem Mr. Prosecutor, you have no idea where bitcoins are "stored" or what the device you have seized is. Which leads me to think you are not qualified to "seize" this type of assets.

It's 2022, Bitcoin has been working practically non-stop since 2009, and governments and the medias have been claiming that only criminals/terrorists use Bitcoin for almost as long... you would think people in his position would know what private keys are and how to secure Bitcoin funds they pretend to "seize".

It's simple, like all crypto newbies this prosecutor has just learned: Not your keys, not your coins.

This apllies if you have keys and you are not certain you are the only one to have them... anyone else with these keys can/will most likely claim them before you.

Re: Feds seized $311M in Bitcoin, then hacker stole it back

#23
post #6

It's not immediately clear to me that this is illegal. If anything, the Feds didn't "seize" the Bitcoin, they forcibly acquired a license to the wallet's private key. If they didn't understand that the license was non-exclusive, well, that's not the fault of the other licensees.

Following this argumentation would imply that cryptocurrencies don't provide a real value and therefore can't be stolen (which also implies that your average cryptocurrency scam is fair game because nothing of value is lost). A bank account can be seized but that access is not a license. IP is irrelevant here.

A crypto wallet isn't a bank account though. A bank account has controls on who has access, with an owner to grant and revoke it.

Everyone has access to use every crypto wallet

Re: Feds seized $311M in Bitcoin, then hacker stole it back

#24

It's not immediately clear to me that this is illegal. If anything, the Feds didn't "seize" the Bitcoin, they forcibly acquired a license to the wallet's private key. If they didn't understand that the license was non-exclusive, well, that's not the fault of the other licensees.

I don't think license is the right word, but equal access to the FBI to that wallet

Re: Feds seized $311M in Bitcoin, then hacker stole it back

#26
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may not technically be theft, but surely there’s an assortment of crimes committed by doing what he did, including but not limited to fraud, conspiracy, and interference with an investigation.

Are you just naming random crimes?

It is also up to and including, but not limited to wiretapping, tampering with evidence, and monetary regicide.

Re: Feds seized $311M in Bitcoin, then hacker stole it back

#27

> Agents built a detailed financial picture of Larry. Inspecting his cloud accounts... Scariest part of the article.

scary? did you just wake from a 15 year coma? you store anything in a big-corp cloud, which you haven't personally encrypted, with keys that only you possess, then assume it's all backed up in fed repos (somewhat hyperbolic, especially for non-crims, but not far fetched by any means) that's neither new, nor news (sadly)

This is why I don’t bother with RAID (besides 0). If a drive ever fails I just FOIA NSA and all my data shows up a few weeks later, usually with a nasty letter about how this is the last time

Re: Feds seized $311M in Bitcoin, then hacker stole it back

#28

> Agents built a detailed financial picture of Larry. Inspecting his cloud accounts... Scariest part of the article.

scary? did you just wake from a 15 year coma? you store anything in a big-corp cloud, which you haven't personally encrypted, with keys that only you possess, then assume it's all backed up in fed repos (somewhat hyperbolic, especially for non-crims, but not far fetched by any means) that's neither new, nor news (sadly)

"New" isn't a prerequisite for "scary".

Re: Feds seized $311M in Bitcoin, then hacker stole it back

#29

If you find yourself in the similar situation, use RenVM to get your bitcoin over to an EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine, many networks use EVMs now), then you have many more options. You can still use Tornado cash. You can still withdraw from Tornado cash to new addresses. You can use those funds in those new addresses to buy and pump the price of the the smallcap tokens you already owned with your salary money. Decent…

(other things to note: - for the bitcoin transaction, you should do this from a machine or VM running Tor system wide. - for the EVM transactions, you can do this from the Tor machine as well, but also consider running your own node because in EVMs the nodes do not know which node saw a transaction first. Whereas using a remote note such as Infura or Alchemy has lots of records. Most of the Ethereum stack is Javascri…

No post body was provided.

Re: Feds seized $311M in Bitcoin, then hacker stole it back

#30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

scary? did you just wake from a 15 year coma? you store anything in a big-corp cloud, which you haven't personally encrypted, with keys that only you possess, then assume it's all backed up in fed repos (somewhat hyperbolic, especially for non-crims, but not far fetched by any means) that's neither new, nor news (sadly)

This is why I don’t bother with RAID (besides 0). If a drive ever fails I just FOIA NSA and all my data shows up a few weeks later, usually with a nasty letter about how this is the last time

This legitimately made me guffaw. Well done.
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