Did the US Government just become the biggest Bitcoin HODLer?
Hi HODLers and Crypto Lovers,
Federal officials seized some $3.6 billion worth of bitcoin tied to the 2016 hack of the crypto exchange Bitfinex.
$3.6bn would make it definitely the top Bitcoin holder in the world (as least what we know of). The caveat is that technically, these funds are not the property of the US government if it is restituted to the orginal owner: Bitfinex.
The DOJ strongly implies that they might be the original hackers but does not claim it. Also, they do claim the couple has launder and use the proceeds.
The presumed outlaws are the married couple, Ilya "Dutch" Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan! Will we refer about them as Bonnie and Clyde going forward? This remains to be seem :D.
https://twitter.com/BTCGandalf/status/1491140031280410626
Conspiracy theories (are they really?) come to the surface as many wonders how such individuals would store all their private keys on a single set of documents stored on a centralized cloud storage service.
“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 recover more than 94,000 bitcoin that had been stolen from Bitfinex. The recovered bitcoin was valued at over $3.6 billion at the time of seizure."
Who are these individuals?
LinkedIn profiles show a Heather R. Morgan and Dutch Ilya Lichtenstein have listed themselves as employees of SalesFolk since 2009 and 2014, respectively.
Heather Morgan seems to have also been a former columnist at Inc. Magazine and Forbes, while Lichtenstein’s lists previous roles at MixRank, Endpass and 500 Startups.
LEO token pumping following the news
As you can read below, Bitfinex has always stated that they would use 80% of the proceeds of a potential recovery of the hacked funds to buyback and burn LEO tokens !
“If Bitfinex receives a recovery of the stolen bitcoin, as described in the UNUS SED LEO token white paper, Bitfinex will, within 18 months of the date it receives that recovery, use an amount equal to 80% of the recovered net funds to repurchase and burn outstanding UNUS SED LEO tokens,” the company said
LEO Token price
Sources:
US Officials Seize $3.6B in Bitcoin From 2016 Bitfinex Hack
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Hey @vlemon, for a moment I thought it was our LEO 😂
Honestly I would buy a damn ledger and store the keys in a multiple capsules located at multiple places that requires anyone to solve mindbending riddles if they want to open them. Also they must kill their loved to get the full access. 😂
Also, if I had that kind of money, I would remember all the keys by heart. 😂
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Imagine if these funds would be ours and we would buyback our LEO with it hehe ! $100 per LÉO token ? 😅
I was as surprised as you to see how « cringe » and kind of stupid they looked / behaved on social media. It seems they might only be the one laundering the money though…
More information to come soon I would expect
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$100 LEO would be life changing. ❤️ For that we need to hit some centralised exchanges outside Hive. I am not sure if it will happen soon or sooner. 😂
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I think not.
They better be handling over these funds to the exchange and the exchange should be refunding those users who got their funds stolen in this scam.
Indeed and they actually did this through a long period of reimbursement (USD value). So it seems that they did reimburse users before getting these funds back !
I read and quoted the WP part where they claimed that if they ever got these funds back they would use 80% to buyback their own LEO token
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Interesting! Tackling the issue of hacks and crypto theft is a much-needed initiative in the crypto cuffcommunity. More so, partnering with law and crime agencies to track down stolen funds is a welcomed development.
Now that the funds have been recovered, are there any plans to compensate affected users of were they already compensated? Or the only remedial action is the token buyback?
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I have read that the people affected were reimbursed through a Bitfinex program over à quite long period of time (using fees generated by the platform).
But I did not read anything explaining exactly how.
Also, , they have been reimbursed in USD value I am guessing and as Bitcoin mooned. They still incurred an opportunity loss…
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If they were compensated then that was a good one.
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$3.6 billionaire that's a generational money laundered by one person.
Well it wasn’t laundered yet. It was in the process of being 😅. They got caught before hehe
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😊😊😊😊😊
I didn't realize that the other LEO token was built on top of this. Let's see if they follow through with buying back the token after the fact or if it's just some hype.
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https://twitter.com/VinnieLemon/status/1491456018857209856
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