Heard of the two hackers who stole bitcoins worth $5B and recently got caught?
Back in 2016, one of the biggest crypto exchange Bitfinex got hacked.
Around 120,000 BTC worth about $70m at the time were stolen, directly from users’ wallet.
Imagine the shock and disaster it created.
The hack crashed BTC prices by 40%.
Trust was broken, quite literally.
One of the cool things about bitcoin is that it is a public ledger.
Anyone can see the coins moving, and people were monitoring, so the hackers couldn’t do much.
As time went by, better talents came into the space, technology improved tremendously and things changed.
When a large sum of BTC started moving, Whale Alerts picked it up.
Yes, there are fanatics out there, literally tracking all the massive transactions of BTC from wallets to wallets and they tweet about it each time there are movements.
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) was keeping tabs and they managed to hunt down the hackers.
One is a YC alum and the other is his wife, a Youtube Rapper.
She calls herself the “Crocodile of Wall Street” and “RazzlEkhan”, apparently taken from Genghis Khan, and is truly a work of art.
If you never heard of her, good.
She is a really weird persona and a cringe rapper.
Besides her awful rap videos, she is apparently a writer for Forbes, runs a few internet businesses and is an expert in persuasion and social engineering.
Let me just say it.
They don’t look like criminal masterminds and cyber-hacking overlords at all.
Then again, looks are deceiving.
Do entertain this thought: could it all be a setup?
Think about it.
They don’t look the part.
It is way too complicated for them to pull off.
Everything was labeled.
Folders on their computers called “Fake personas” and “Passport Ideas”.
They had an excel list with every wallet and even the seed phrases!
The bag of burner phones were labelled “burner phones”.
They used their real names and emails for everything.
They only managed to launder 4% of all the BTC they stolen.
It shows how hard it is to launder vast amounts of money even with BTC.
They tried using Walmart Gift Cards, Playstation in-game purchases, Uber credits, etc, but with such small amounts, how long will that take till someone sees a pattern?
The dude was a YC alum and seemed really, really normal to all his friends.
They could be the unfortunate scapegoats.
120,000 BTC is worth $5b now.
I hope everyone who lost money will get their BTC back.
Imagine how much gains they made in 6 years, talk about the power of hodl-ing!
I am curious as to how the DOJ managed to bypass the passcodes and get their hands on all the folders and data.
If this is your first time reading about shocking news in the crypto world, welcome!
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