$14M in ETH stolen from Upbit were laundered in May through well-known exchanges
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Re: $14M in ETH stolen from Upbit were laundered in May through well-known exchanges
#2This is an interesting piece, and it highlights one problem I’ve noticed with crypto in general recently, which is that these kinds of investigations are largely being carried out by private entities who build platforms around this type of forensics without any real ability to go after the exchanges that have permitted this laundering.
Between this and Bitfinex refusing to submit to an external auditor and other events, I have a hard time trusting the big crypto players any more than I trust the big banks. Wasn’t that whole point of these coins to begin with?
It seems like the assumption that the problems with the current financial system stem from centralization isn’t holding up, at least when it comes to the administration of these big exchanges. They’re still running into many of the same problems that big banks have, and frankly they’re not doing any better of a job.
Re: $14M in ETH stolen from Upbit were laundered in May through well-known exchanges
#3This is an interesting piece, and it highlights one problem I’ve noticed with crypto in general recently, which is that these kinds of investigations are largely being carried out by private entities who build platforms around this type of forensics without any real ability to go after the exchanges that have permitted this laundering. Between this and Bitfinex refusing to submit to an external auditor and other even…
Are there any authorities that help track down stuff like this now? If you can pay taxes on it you'd think the police would help investigate a theft.
Re: $14M in ETH stolen from Upbit were laundered in May through well-known exchanges
#4This is an interesting piece, and it highlights one problem I’ve noticed with crypto in general recently, which is that these kinds of investigations are largely being carried out by private entities who build platforms around this type of forensics without any real ability to go after the exchanges that have permitted this laundering. Between this and Bitfinex refusing to submit to an external auditor and other even…
Are there any authorities that help track down stuff like this now? If you can pay taxes on it you'd think the police would help investigate a theft.
Last I had heard the FBI and Royal Canadian Mounted Police were investigating the QuadrigaX situation so it definitely happens.
It seems law enforcement doesn’t really have the time (and maybe lacks the interest/expertise) to investigate most cryptocurrency cases until they become major news.
Re: $14M in ETH stolen from Upbit were laundered in May through well-known exchanges
#5This is an interesting piece, and it highlights one problem I’ve noticed with crypto in general recently, which is that these kinds of investigations are largely being carried out by private entities who build platforms around this type of forensics without any real ability to go after the exchanges that have permitted this laundering. Between this and Bitfinex refusing to submit to an external auditor and other even…
I think you've hit on the core reason cryptocurrencies aren't going to take off as currencies. They've taken the governance aspect previously enacted by the federal reserve and enforced through the banks and replaced it with a shadowy cabal of exchange owners.
Ultimately I think it's a people problem that can't be solved through technology. But cryptocurrency does happen to be quite useful for money laundering...
Re: $14M in ETH stolen from Upbit were laundered in May through well-known exchanges
#6This is an interesting piece, and it highlights one problem I’ve noticed with crypto in general recently, which is that these kinds of investigations are largely being carried out by private entities who build platforms around this type of forensics without any real ability to go after the exchanges that have permitted this laundering. Between this and Bitfinex refusing to submit to an external auditor and other even…
You definitely don't need to trust these players most of the time. Your coins can sit in an offline wallet out of their reach for the majority of the time.
What you use them for is liquidity. Since you probably won't find a private party to buy/sell from. Realistically if you want to buy, or sell coins you have to go through one of them. And yes that kinda sucks because none of them are trustworthy., so you have some amount of risk there.
The larger problems comes from the risk they inject in the market just by existing. They will be hacked, fail KYC, or straight up scam exit with all their customers money and that will impact the value of the market as a whole.
For my risk tolerance, crypto is completely uninvestable
Re: $14M in ETH stolen from Upbit were laundered in May through well-known exchanges
#7This is an interesting piece, and it highlights one problem I’ve noticed with crypto in general recently, which is that these kinds of investigations are largely being carried out by private entities who build platforms around this type of forensics without any real ability to go after the exchanges that have permitted this laundering. Between this and Bitfinex refusing to submit to an external auditor and other even…
you seem to be conflating like 5 issues at the same time, elevating crypto to a fictional higher standard for areas it wasn't made to excel in.
"crypto" isn't acting differently here because this article is about centralized financial institutions.
and then there are expectations of those centralized financial institutions that are higher than non-crypto centralized financial institutions, simply because we can partially trace the destination of the funds
ironically, the only reason we can even do this is because of the hacker not following best practices, and the exchanges not following best practices. exchanges should be rotating addresses upon every deposit, and there should be no way of knowing that an address belongs to an exchange.
the hackers actually might be following some normal money laundering best practices, without taking into account how to improve them with crypto. the accounts they send the funds to may not actually be in their control. Like the funds may have changed physical owners through invoices and real services, and simply following onchain transfers won't tell you anything except "look ma, BLOCKCHAIN!". The new physical owner sent their address and that dumb person got their funds frozen because it was a custodial centralized exchange flagging origin transactions.
So the reality is that these investigations don't show anything, except try to advertise their work to get government contracts or private plaintiff's lawyers to pay them.
Re: $14M in ETH stolen from Upbit were laundered in May through well-known exchanges
#8This is an interesting piece, and it highlights one problem I’ve noticed with crypto in general recently, which is that these kinds of investigations are largely being carried out by private entities who build platforms around this type of forensics without any real ability to go after the exchanges that have permitted this laundering. Between this and Bitfinex refusing to submit to an external auditor and other even…
Are there any authorities that help track down stuff like this now? If you can pay taxes on it you'd think the police would help investigate a theft.
yes, plenty. national authorities are fully capable and familiar with crypto currency transactions and how to request coordination to subpoena foreign exchanges.
its happened plenty of times and funds have been recovered, its usually in Department of Justice press releases and an associated court filing. Other times you can just talk to people that were involved in an investigation. Not really news, stuff happens way after the event.
Re: $14M in ETH stolen from Upbit were laundered in May through well-known exchanges
#9This is an interesting piece, and it highlights one problem I’ve noticed with crypto in general recently, which is that these kinds of investigations are largely being carried out by private entities who build platforms around this type of forensics without any real ability to go after the exchanges that have permitted this laundering. Between this and Bitfinex refusing to submit to an external auditor and other even…
Not your keys, not your coins™ -- with that as the core philosophy of cryptocurrency, can you even say this was stolen, let alone laundered?
It sounds like the person with the keys transferred the coins into another wallet.
Resolved: behaves correctly. At least, as intended anyways.
Re: $14M in ETH stolen from Upbit were laundered in May through well-known exchanges
#10This is an interesting piece, and it highlights one problem I’ve noticed with crypto in general recently, which is that these kinds of investigations are largely being carried out by private entities who build platforms around this type of forensics without any real ability to go after the exchanges that have permitted this laundering. Between this and Bitfinex refusing to submit to an external auditor and other even…
it is like saying in the 90s: we don't need open protocols like pop3/imap, because AOL is centralized anyway
(fast forward today: yes, most people still use centralized gmail/outlook.com, but I still have a) the choice to host my mails and b) lower cost to build a service that compete with the big ones, as I don't need to part of the big-players to plug-in to the open "email-system")
In "crypto" centralized" companies are not required for most stuff inside crypto (mostly necessary to bridge the new with the old fiat system)