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$477M FTX ‘hack’ was a Bahamian government asset seizure

marketwatch.com

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Re: $477M FTX ‘hack’ was a Bahamian government asset seizure

#101

Post by orionion »

stefan_ wrote: post #30
sanxiyn wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any evidence? At a glance, this seems to be Bahamian civil servants diligently doing their duty that was given.

A seizure of funds is certainly not the first step of bankruptcy proceedings. SBF seems to have "fled" to the Bahamas, and he would obviously have the access needed to make the transfer. And as the article says, the Bahamas are trying to get the US Chapter 11 proceedings thrown out arguing their own bankruptcy proceedings have priority. There was also the mystery texts from SBF arguing "Chapter 11 was my biggest mist…

The Bahamian government is overseen by "The Firm"...

>The Crown and the Police Force https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarchy_of_the_Bahamas#The_Cr...

The national police force of the Bahamas is known as "The Royal Bahamas Police Force".

>The St. Edward's Crown appears on the Bahamian Police's badges and rank insignia, which illustrates the monarchy as the locus of authority.

>Every member of the Royal Bahamas Police Force has to swear allegiance to the monarch of the Bahamas, on taking office.

("Monarch of the Bahamas" aka King Charles III of Great Britain.)

I can imagine many levels of royal induced pressure being applied here.

Re: $477M FTX ‘hack’ was a Bahamian government asset seizure

#102

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

ehnto wrote: post #74
zeven7 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another interesting angle to this is that the funds were collected in various different currencies, but all of them were converted into ETH. And they weren't converted carefully to make sure they got the full value, no attempt at OTC deals or anything; they were converted in a rush and dumped on the open market. This resulted in pretty clear loss of funds. It seems like a strange way for a government to operate. That…

I agree with your last paragraph, but the prior makes total sense. The government aren't crypto experts nor were they trying to min-max their incoming half a billion. They wanted it quick and easy.

Yes, however, governments do on occasion hire experts in various fields. During my last conference the discussion was exactly on how you can't just drop millions of BTC/ETH w/e into the market without effectively hurting the price. It is not like they were trying to be nice to the markets. The money just had to be split between several cooperating agencies so there was a reason to maximize return in USD.

Re: $477M FTX ‘hack’ was a Bahamian government asset seizure

#103

Post by causi »

throweroni wrote: post #98
zoklet-enjoyer wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't have a system set up to protect against that. Their private keys were on a shared email account

Holy wow. That's wild. Ten years ago when my crypto was worth barely anything I had an airgapped, full disk encrypted, RasPi which required a Shamir's Secret Sharing key arrangement to unlock as my cold storage... just because it was something fun to setup. Here a multi-billion dollar enterprise has less sophisticated OpSec. Just... wow.

It was run by a dude who plays League of Legends on conference calls and openly encourages his employees to take amphetamines to increase their job performance.

Re: $477M FTX ‘hack’ was a Bahamian government asset seizure

#104

Post by causi »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #70
throwaway9980 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guns. Guns are how. Guns are how governments achieve their objectives. There is no crypto scheme, no algorithm, no possible arrangement of private keys and Merkle trees that can escape the reality of men with guns.

> There is no crypto scheme, no algorithm, no possible arrangement of private keys and Merkle trees that can escape the reality of men with guns. On the contrary. It's the only case where maths can defend vs men with guns. Multi sig schemes spread over different people over several continents make the "men with guns" thing very difficult. Or multisig but m-out-of-n, with a dead beat: if after x weeks you don't hear o…

"Hey trick your friends into helping you give us the funds or we throw you under the jail."

Re: $477M FTX ‘hack’ was a Bahamian government asset seizure

#105

Post by DuskStar »

causi wrote: post #103
throweroni wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holy wow. That's wild. Ten years ago when my crypto was worth barely anything I had an airgapped, full disk encrypted, RasPi which required a Shamir's Secret Sharing key arrangement to unlock as my cold storage... just because it was something fun to setup. Here a multi-billion dollar enterprise has less sophisticated OpSec. Just... wow.

It was run by a dude who plays League of Legends on conference calls and openly encourages his employees to take amphetamines to increase their job performance.

> dude who plays League of Legends

A dude who plays LoL badly. Embarrassingly badly for his number of games.

Re: $477M FTX ‘hack’ was a Bahamian government asset seizure

#106

Post by lazide »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #97
devmunchies wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> using people You mean violence. Physical force. In that context, the means is irrelevant and pedantic.

So why specify guns? Especially when they're so rarely used in situations like this.

Used? Sure. You don’t need to use it when everyone knows what will happen. The presence is enough 99% of the time.

Or are you saying cops don’t have real pistols in their holsters, and agents just pretend to be armed on those raids?

Re: $477M FTX ‘hack’ was a Bahamian government asset seizure

#107

Post by 55555 »

No one is mentioning that the new FTX CEO wrote in a recent Chapter 11 filing that the hack we're discussing here was actually 2 events: the movement of ~$300 in crypto AND the dilutive printing of ~$300 in FTT.

Can somebody please explain that second one? Because this makes no sense at all.

Re: $477M FTX ‘hack’ was a Bahamian government asset seizure

#108

Post by smegger001 »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #97
devmunchies wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> using people You mean violence. Physical force. In that context, the means is irrelevant and pedantic.

So why specify guns? Especially when they're so rarely used in situations like this.

because most governments quit using swords long enough ago that guns are now the symbol representing violent force.

Re: $477M FTX ‘hack’ was a Bahamian government asset seizure

#109

Post by 3a2d29 »

throwaway9980 wrote: post #26
woodruffw wrote: post #19

Maybe this is a stupid question, but how ? Was the Bahamas' SEC holding its own copies of FTX's keys? I thought the entire point of these schemes was that this kind of seizure-by-force wasn't possible (absent exploits or insiders).

Guns. Guns are how. Guns are how governments achieve their objectives. There is no crypto scheme, no algorithm, no possible arrangement of private keys and Merkle trees that can escape the reality of men with guns.

Relevant comic: https://xkcd.com/538/

Re: $477M FTX ‘hack’ was a Bahamian government asset seizure

#110

Post by [deleted] »

dathinab wrote: post #95
binarynate wrote: post #80

Any thoughts on why SBF lied to the Vox reporter about it being a hack? https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23462333/sam-bankman-frie... Maybe he just didn't want to have to explain some breaking news to her.

> [..] accused Bankman-Fried of attempting to undermine their efforts [..] by pushing the second bankruptcy case if that is true they might have very well had reason to lie until the bankruptcy proceedings in the Bahamas have started successfully/maybe some under the table agreements where completed. I wouldn't be surprised if they have some deal with the Bahamian government giving them some benefit for allowing the…

[deleted]
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