Bitcoin Forum

Recently, I went through the article about the biggest cryptocurrency fraud in history executed by a married couple.  Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan, husband, and wife, have been tracked down by the FBI for laundering 119,754 bitcoins from Bitfinex five years ago. After many attempts to rinse the money through chain hopping on numerous anonymity enhanced cryptocurrencies like monero. The FBI was able to apprehend them.

I want to know, what else does the government want to regulate the cryptocurrency blockchain for if the FBI can perform such a rigorous search on all the virtual accounts that have been created online by the couple? And found the private key linked to the wallet that received the funds, and they recovered over $3.5 billion and recorded it as the biggest seizure in the cryptocurrency niche.



I think the transaction the Government cannot track in the block-chain technology has not be made. FBI claim that they will endeavor to trace any fraudulent activity in the cryptocurreny network through their 21st century investigative technique. (I don't know what they mean by that)


https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Heather-Morgan-Ilya-Lichtensteintcoin-03.jpg?quality=90&strip=all




Read:
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/two-arrested-alleged-conspiracy-launder-45-billion-stolen-cryptocurrency

After that success of FBI now the governments may change their mind for bitcoin. Now they cannot deny the fact that bitcoin is safe for fraud and if someone will do money laundering then they will be caught.

The bitcoin community is thankful to the FBI that they helped those who lost their money because of this hack. It will increase the courage of people who want to adopt bitcoin for their personal lives and for their businesses.

If I don't care on spending lots of UTXO in one shot, reusing addresses, mixing coins, coinjoining etc., that doesn't necessarily mean that Bitcoin is bad for criminals. Lots have been caught and it's generally not a good idea if you're going to do something really bad, but it depends from whom you want to hide. Is it your wife or your employer? They aren't going to find out much if you use Bitcoin. Is it the government? You're screwed.

However, I read that those two kept the private keys of the 119,754 BTC to a cloud server. I highly doubt they were cautious enough. Also, this doesn't make sense:

I don't understand the aspect you translated the meaning of the phrase. But, I think once a transaction gets confirmed on the blockchain, and the ID is available for everyone to access the Government can trace the transaction through some FBI tools. If a fund is not moved they won't be a way for the Government to know that such a huge amount is been disseminated on different wallets such that it can be changed to fiat. I don't think any criminal will ever hodl bitcoin without changing it to fiat. That's what I meant by that.

With bitcoin's transparency, it will always give a hard time for scammers and other criminal acts to succeed. They may enjoy the stolen money temporarily, but know that they will always be traced later on. That gives more advantage to use bitcoin as everything is transparent compared to fiat that is more dubious and questionable. That is why money fraudulence and laundering is rampant in fiat while in bitcoin its more controlled.

With all these advantages about bitcoin, i don't see enough reason why the government is still hesitant to accept bitcoin knowing all its transactions are transparent and so you can't see any illegalities from it. Best proof is that FBI has managed to traced whatever fraudulence that happened to it. That is, if the government can also be transparent in all their transactions, so there is no valid reason that bitcoin cannot be accepted as a currency.

The government is still hesitant not because of transparency but because it is decentralized and they could never get a hold of the whole picture of all the btc transactions. I believe that's one major reason. But when we talk about transparency purposes, btc is actually a good currency as the people will now see where the money goes. For example, government projects with known btc address/es, the public can now trace where the funds are going, thus, lessening the bribery part. That is, if the government will utilize the btc option.

And also, if these fraudsters know how to manage their btc to remain anonymous, they actually can. This is why there are mixers. But I guess, these two made a mistake.

Just wondering on why they havent done lots of ways on mixing out those coins so that they wouldnt able to be traced up considering that there are several ways on mixing your coins
without being caught but well its just right that they are just dumb enough on having no consideration on making  those things and thats the reason on why theyve been traced up.

they were not caught because of any ID on the transaction/blockchain.

they instead gave away their ID on an exchange. .. and deposited coins into the exchange. where the exchange connected the two pieces of information. and the exchange reported them for suspicious activity

so yea, if you are converting to fiat. that part is the fatal flaw which can identify you being linked to crypto.

because any business offering fiat exchange services has to abide by fiat exchange regulation.. no matter what asset/currency is being exchanged for fiat

Was it possible for them to have avoided getting caught? I think so. The reason why they're caught is more of their own faults rather than the capabilities of the FBI to track them down. Of course it is very hard to be extremely careful every step of the way. It might even be next to impossible to avoid committing an act of negligence or carelessness forever. It is hard not to commit a mistake and leave a trace. But it could be done.

The news of the arrest was quite shocking, how could it not be, after 6 years the FBI finally caught the couple, even though the FBI took a long time to uncover the real culprit in the theft but we should appreciate the FBI's performance so far, I also think every crime what was done, of course, only took time to be revealed by the police, just like what the couple did even though they had been doing the theft for years but still they left a trail that got them caught today, reportedly they will probably be sentenced to a minimum prison sentence of 20 years, and also m conspiracy to deceive the state with a prison sentence of five.

I also agree that the couple did not do anything to make it difficult for the police to detect them. The FBI is right that sooner or later scammers make mistakes. And each solved crime becomes "work on mistakes" for other swindlers. Experienced scammers, I think, draw conclusions. The police probably shouldn't talk about what they're doing to track down and detect scammers. By showing all the details of the search in this story, the police only exacerbate further disclosures.

Me too. And that doesn't mean that Bitcoin is not a safe haven for criminals. It can be a safe haven for everybody, depending on how you use it, bitcoin is a tool.

This case reminds me of what we have repeatedly talked about in the legal section. The case that the OP comments would be the case of some stolen Bitcoins but even if they are Bitcoin of legal origin, if you can not clearly justify the origin, because maybe you bought them P2P and passed them through mixers for privacy, you better not let the ball get too big and go spending them little by little or always declare them before they become a large amount.

This couple got caught because trying to launder large amounts of money without leaving a trace is extremely difficult.

We only heard of criminals that have been caught, but how many criminals are there who never tried to cash out what they stole and who never tried bad privacy practices when sending their transactions? It seems that the couple that is accused of money laundering has never heard about good bitcoin mixers, the dangers of KYC, the risks of using centralized exchanges, coin control, labeling, CoinJoin, Whirlpool, and other things that good money launderers must know about to launder money more successfully. If, for example, some expert in blockchain analysis wanted to launder dirty bitcoins from a centralized exchange, is there a chance that he would have left so many traces that would clearly indicate his involvement in the crime and his identity? I think it would be a lot harder to track where stolen funds are. Bitcoin is not a safe haven for criminals because it is still a transparent public ledger accessible for everyone, but bitcoin is even less safe for stupid criminals that have zero understanding of how the blockchain works.

It is how we use bitcoin. If we have a large amount of bitcoin, we need to know how to spend our bitcoin and not spend a large amount to make a transaction. That can get attention from the local banks, investigators or some regulators to check your account.

As long as we can use bitcoin as it should be, we can stay safe and won't attract their attention. But if there are people who use bitcoin in large quantities, surely they have considered what they should do.

This is very true. The local banks today in my country don't allow us to withdraw more than 0.2BTC a day. This is even bigger than some other countries. If we do withdraw 0.2BTC, the banks are going to ask where the funds come from. I heard they will ask many questions and advise the person of online fraud. FBI isn't even needed when it comes to withdrawing big amounts of money, the banks will raise eyebrows already.

Tracking experienced hackers will be difficult for FBI but for this couple, I think only bankers and databases will be enough.

I'm wondering how much of that will go to the victims of the Bitfinex hack? I mean, it looks like the victims are not going to lose anything dollar wise, right? We can see that 75% of the stolen money were recovered, and in 2016 BTC was below $1,000, so I would say the robbed Bitfinex users have benefited from all of this at the end. And that's a very good news for Bitcoin investors, current and potential, overall. I think when they will process what's happened, Bitcoin price will go up because of the new demand.

if your funds is clear and safe , meaning not coming from questionable transaction i think there is no need to be mandated to take small faction , instead you can use the limit given by exchange .
it is far different from your topic to what OP is telling us.
Businesses that invested in crypto has no issue at all because all of their transactions are legit and worth trusting.
but if you are in Illegal matter then this is not what we can explain here.

So true. If they didn't give out their identity to an exchange, they won't have been caught.
Scammers are now using bitcoin as an escape route not to be traced.
This is a job well done by the FBI. This kind of news will put fear into scammers when they fully know that can hide for so long from the FBI, that one day the FBI will catch up with them.
If the FBI continue grabbing this fraudster it help to curtail the number of scammers in crypto.

Criminals can also be divided into intelligent and non-intelligent, and the former know how to hide their tracks and stay under the radar. If you steal a lot of money, the authorities will have a much greater interest in finding you and will spend significant resources on it, but in case someone hacks 50 or 100 BTC, does anyone think that the FBI would deal with this case?


An articles on the subject these days claims that part of the transactions went through the Wasabi wallet, but the couple did a lot of other nonsense that made it easier to detect them, because as we see they lived very luxuriously and were exposed in public. In addition, mixers are not something that guarantees 100% anonymity, an interesting study (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5117328.0) was published a few years ago on the forum.

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@Accardo, please reduce the image to a size appropriate for the forum - and everyone else refrains from quoting such large images unnecessarily - there are people who have limited internet traffic, and maybe even very slow internet which makes it difficult for them to browse the forum.

I think this is considered one of the collateral effects of transacting into the blockchain- absolute anonymity especially if you use mixers along the way. Though there have been cases where criminals where able to purchase contraband items under the dark web, it is still without a doubt financial freedom on our end.

Similarly to fiat, anyone can purchase guns or any contraband stuff using it. In fact, fiat is the main currency where every country uses, so stating that transacting BTC is associated with criminal activities is just a speck of its total potential in the market.

It's great that criminals can't hide behind the network of decentralized computers. It's comforting to see that cyber criminals are getting caught and thrown inside prison. The cyber criminals must understand that they can't run forever and enforcement agencies have tools to track them down.

I would recommend to read this article to get better insight on how DOJ had tracked them down.

https://time.com/6146749/cryptocurrency-laundering-bitfinex-hack/

Every criminal even in fiat world will be sloppy at time and they are going to be caught. And just like in crypto world wherein every transaction is recorded in blockchain. It's just how the government spend their time trying to crack the puzzle of the criminals. Because sooner or later they will find some foot prints that will incriminate them. They just need one addresses to follow and uncovering the real identities of the criminals just like in this case.

KYC is one of the ways used by exchanges to find out user data and overcome crimes such as fraud in crypto. Of course the pros and cons of KYC are many, but for those who don't want to use KYC it's their personal choice.
Everything will be traceable even without using KYC, because transactions will continue to be recorded and will eventually find out where the money is finally going.

This is one way of exchange to battle frauds that's why we see the numbers of activities lessen on exchange as well in casino since some several casino are now implementing it. Mostly frauds happened in NFT now which ghost trades happen so I think maybe this will be one will taken action by government since for now anyone can easily get out a huge amount of money by buying what so called Nft to make things look legitimate.

Yes it's not but it's a temporary respite because it's pseudonymous and they will only be identified if they are going to be purposely tracked which is difficult in of itself because they can disguise the movement of their money by making it an intermittent transaction instead of just going in one go and they end blending up with all the other people, I don't think that it's of any use for us to deny that criminals can't use bitcoin for their illegal activities.

With this scenario, scammers are now extra careful when cashing out their stolen crypto but what I want is they will be all caught with their own mistakes. That's right, we don't need to know about how the police caught them or what strategies they used. because it's crucial tools for their next target and they might fail to track the others. This is how it should be when they publish it, they need to emphasize their criminal act and not to put the blame on bitcoin.

this will serve as warning for all scammers/hackers and all the bad element in crypto world that Justice will always be serve , no matter how long it will take but surely you will face what you must have in time.

criminals will always be behind bars , and this news prove it to be valid and true.

some criminals believe that they can hide using crypto but wrong, law will always there to sue you and bring you to justice .

It is possible. They can just leave the place where they currently leave or change details, everything from their name to emails and the device that use but I think they never did that. They got comfortable and think they will never get caught because the transaction done was online plus it was already a long time when the hack happened but I do not under estimate the fbi.

They can hire professionals in the IT field to do the work. It is true what they say that bitcoin is really not a safe haven not only for the non criminals or the the normal investors because it has risk and more over to the criminals because they could possibly be traced.

Well, they know if this is going to be that case, how many of the people involved in Bitcoin will ever leave their money in any bank account? and how would they, the Government be able to control the people if they no longer have access to your funds? did you see what the Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is trying to do? Trudeau vows to freeze anti-mandate protesters' bank accounts. (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60383385) It is a way to control so they will never let it happen regardless of how transparent they know it is.

Exactly but they still can use crypto for their nefarious purposes, if you look at bitcoin, it's still a pseudonymous cryptocurrency so the criminals still has a leeway for them to use. Pretty sure that we don't have any clue about how the police work even if they reveal a snippet of their procedure, the people who track down this criminals aren't dumb so we can be assured that they're going to only improve.

I think it depends on how good you are at clearing your tracks and who exactly you're trying to run from? I mean, most caught cases of criminals are honestly just because of a slipup or an inside job, and not exactly because the government was able to trace them perfectly. It's basically a waiting game for them, trying to find a mistake they'd do and then capitalize on that mistake to trace everything back down from where it came from to where they are or who they are. That's how they do their jobs.

Criminals will always find one or the other way to continue their activities and we cannot deny the fact it can be used by criminals and others involved in money laundering which cannot be stopped unless crypto is centralized which will make it no different than a bank or stock market. We should be more focussed on the merits of bitcoin and crypto in general because criminals were operating even before the evolution of crypto and will be active even if crypto disappears one day. We have to live with it as too many restrictions or checks will kill the essence of decentralisation.

If they are not been suspected of suspicious activities leading to the exchanges reports, they are still free till now. But yes, they leave such traces that could help the FBI to detect the couple's fraud activities. Honestly, they are not too smart to hide their doings but they are too bold enough to leave such a trace.

Even we think it was a success story for the FBI in hunting criminals like them, keeping anonymous won't easily give them the idea of who are they. But with their simple mistake could somewhat give a hint to the authorities and that is the reason why they end up getting caught.

I agree with you. Stealing has been romanticized for centuries in books and movies, so it's no wonder some people don't feel bad about robbing others, but at least they can learn through getting prison sentences for their deeds.

Here's another good article on the subject:

https://www.elliptic.co/blog/elliptic-analysis-bitcoin-bitfinex-theft

It's about blockchain analytics used to identify the thieves.

Overall I'm glad that usage of cryptocurrency makes the lives of criminals harder, not easier as some journalists say.

I don't believe for a second that these morons pulled the biggest fraud in crypto history. Look at their faces. Look at their clothes. What do you see? I see 2 average Joes. This whole could be staged. Could be anything. Maybe the real frauds are still out there. Maybe there weren't any scams but only insider activity. All I know is these people had nothing to do with it.

this is a story that even surprised me because many scammers who managed to steal a lot of money were not found and arrested until today, I'm talking for example about the case of ponzi scheme HashOcean Cloud Mining Scam and so many other cases of hack, theft and that never were found, the truth and that cryptocurrencies make life easier for scammers, those guys who got arrested were unlucky, this is something that can happen, but in most cases scammers are not punished and not even found

I think the media exaggerates a little how much cryptos are related to various shady activities because they focus on every scandal but the vast majority of the industry is not, in fact, part of a scandal. This leaves the public with a skewed impression about cryptocurrencies.

Recently, actually, a report came out about what part of the global crypto transactions have been part of a money-laundering scheme. (https://deposit-withdraw.com/money-laundering-of-crypto-assets-reaches-8-6-billion-in-2021/) The actual data was very interesting. In 2021 fraudulent money laundering of cryptos was worth more than 8.6 billion US dollars, which is 30% higher than the number gathered in 2020 6.6 billion US dollars. Both of these numbers seem eye-watering, but in context it is not quite like that -  in 2021 alone, money laundering of digital assets accounts for just 0.05% of all crypto-related global transactions, which is but a drop in the bucket.

In comparison, the UN Office of Drugs and Crime has released a report in which it has estimated that between 800 billion US dollars and 2trillion USD worth of fiats are laundered each year. This is equal to 5% of the global GDP.

I think that changes the perspective a little?

i've read a lot of articles about this couple,i bet $1000 they're just the "fall guys",i mean you're saying that you have all the knowledge to single handled hack a entire exchange and you let your private keys on a online cloud service using your REAL EMAIL address connected to other addresses used to launder the money? something just doesn't seem right...

There was story making the rounds that there were brothers from Israel who were in on the theft.
https://www.bitdefender.com/blog/hotforsecurity/two-brothers-arrested-for-bitfinex-hack-and-multi-year-cryptocurrency-phishing-campaign
But that was back in 2019 so they probably couldn't account for the entire amount so moved on to these two linking them by the coins which moved to wallet addresses instead.

well that's true, local banks can be very sensitive if there are funds that don't come in as usual, sometimes we need to arrange withdrawals so that local banks are not suspicious of funds that go into our accounts
or we will deal with the bank for interrogation

It's not a safe haven, but it's still susceptible to a portion of those criminals who either fly below the radar and never get caught. The pair mentioned took a bite they couldn't chew, but there are tons of low-key thievery, scamming, and likewise, that just never gets resolved. In some cases, some of the perpetrators are known. And when you add all of them up, it's still a hefty number. But crypto is not the exception here, it's the norm as the same things happen outside of crypto.

The question is if we have a very large amount of bitcoin and it is not the result of theft or fraud, why should we do it like that?
So as long as it's the result of a good and right way and not from theft or fraud, why do you have to make withdrawals many times because making total withdrawals is also not a problem. because you have evidence and your answer doesn't match the OP's and that's tantamount to giving the thief a safe passage. :D

Countries that have legalized cryptocurrencies as digital asset commodities will not have a problem with this, but various countries that are not friendly with cryptocurrencies will question it because they are suspected of making deposits from cryptocurrency activities, the solution is to make trusted P2P withdrawal transactions to prevent deposit constraints to the central bank in some countries that directly prohibit cryptocurrency activities.

It only takes one slip up for the authorities to pick up the scent and then they are like a blood hound on a blood trail. You can use 20 Mixer services and then you push some coins through an exchange and the "amount" will raise the red flag. The exchanges have all your information and they report suspicious transactions to the authorities.

The authorities then look at your financial history to see if you have or had the ability to gather that kind of money (inheritance / Job / large sales like property / Bank statements etc.) and if they cannot find a reason why you suddenly acquired that kind of income, they simply arrest you on suspicion of a crime and then they use a search warrant to look for that reason.  ;)

This is a really good way to prove it to critics who keeps lying about Bitcoin that everything that they have been saying is totally a lie. Some critics has always been saying that Bitcoin is being used by scammers, because it makes them anonymous and that they won’t be caught, and they’re always using this as an excuse as a way for them to push for the ban of Bitcoin. So, I believe that with news like this that it is crystal clear now that Bitcoin cannot be a tool for such thing. So, those of them carrying such news can now know that all they have been saying all this while is totally wrong.

If those people who made critics against bitcoin know exactly that there is more transparency in bitcoin compared to fiat, then will never stick to their own belief that bitcoin is very useful for criminals. In fact, there are more cases in fiat compared to bitcoin about money laundering and fraudulence, and most of them end up unresolved. But with bitcoin, no matter how good you are in scamming, this decentralized but transparent system will never make you succeed in the long run as you will still be traced and identified after series of investigations.

They were stupid enough to send their ID and verify themselves on a centralized exchange and send coins to the exchange wallet where the exchange was able to link the transactions to the stolen wallet. Yes, bitcoin transactions can be traced to you, but they won't know who YOU are unless they somehow manage to link you with the address (KYC, sending documents or interacting with wallets that has been confirmed to be associated with you). They probably would have never been caught if they knew how to stay under the radar.

When we do tend to count on cases in terms of those resolved cases compared to those who are still pending or not been resolved then we do see the difference in numbers which simply means that its quite evident

that it would really be still a safe haven because as long those hackers dont touch up centralized platforms or services on which they could mix those coins out then there's no way that you could really trace them up

but its true that everything couldnt really be anonymous if you are really that serious on tracing those things.

It's amazing how the Feds can get to the bottom of all these crypto heists and frauds yet cannot solve large-scale money laundering done on USD. It's as if they're choosing which currencies will they work on and scream to the world that they're the best at what they do. Anyway, with the recent bust on the $3.5B heist, this will make criminals have second thoughts on whether they should use crypto or not to launder their money. Knowing that the FBI has tools to track them, I doubt they will still prefer crypto after all.

I think that they'll still use it. With the bunch of scams and spams that's happening in the internet, they still prefer crypto. But maybe, those that are looking at this arrest. They might prefer to use privacy coins.

I've never thought of this but it's possible. I remember some heists that has happened with fiat and bank fraud transactions, there's always the sacrifice if it's a large scale.

If the government is able to catch scammers who are making use of cryptocurrency Bitcoin, then there is no excuse for them to be saying that cryptocurrency can be a tool for funding terrorism or any illicit activity. By being able to capture those who are involved in this activity, then there is every possibility that the government will also be able to capture others who are involved in making use of crypto currency to fund any illicit activities. 

We have seen so many events like this take place, where the government were able to easily catch perpetrators involved in it, so that shows us that anyone who is making use of Bitcoin can be traced by the government no matter where and How they are using it.

Bitcoin has never been a safe haven. It was never supposed to be a safe haven or "anonymous". It was supposed to be decentralised, public and out of control of the governments or anyone elses hands. That makes it FAIR. And it does not get fairer than that.

Does that mean there are no safe havens? There are. Monero is a very safe haven, for example. But then again, Monero is not and will never be what Bitcoin is and what Bitcoin stands for. Freedom for the people and a sanction against the corrupt and broken fiat monetary system.

Criminals will never be safe. There will always be ways that will get them caught, sooner or later. Its the criminals like bankers and fund managers who use legal methods to screw everyone else over that we want to eradicate.

^ We have many agencies now that studying blockchain and how to trace wallet addresses that are linked to any exchange platform where the BTC scammed landed. It is publicly seen to anyone per transaction so it is possible hackers can be tracked. We have heard different hacks that have been solved, also terrorism will probably easiest job for those who know how to solve and trace this kind of crime. I believe that nothing is anonymous in BTC but still you can protect your privacy.

For me, bitcoin will never be a safe haven both for potential investors and with criminals.  As crypto is unpredictable, it won't always guarantee good profits and fixed income as anytime  prices fall down so there is less chances to become profitable. On the other hand, criminals won't end up succeeding in bitcoin. Remember that bitcoin is very transparent, and everything that happens in the dark will always be known later on and will be traced by the government. So at the end of the day, criminals will still be put in jail.

It doesn't even make any sense for them to even pursue that narrative about Bitcoin in the first place. How many scams and money laundering and many other financial vises have been done with Fiat currency, why was there no rally of banning Fiat currency? Bitcoin was just been hated upon without any meaningful reason but this will fade with more positive news coming forth about the Bitcoin ecosystem that it is not as bad as what they believe. 

Furthermore bitcoin is only pseudoanonym..
I think exchanging Bitcoins for fiat currencies is as difficult as laundering normal drug money.
The only thing that offers more security than cash is encryption or private keys #BTC

Frauds, money laundering, and any criminal acts in regards to money can be easy to trace by the authorities if they are using fiat money but if they are only using crypto like Bitcoin, that can be hard for them as they can still hide their real identity. With what OP has mentioned, they leave a trace that made them become visible and hints that it lead who are they.

Well, it has to say that they should have to pay for what they are doing.

               Government wants regulations because hunting down such crypto currency offenders isn't as easy as what they are trying to portray. It consumes a lot of time, effort and resources. Had the amount not been that big or if the victims didn't care enough about their stolen funds, I highly doubt that the FBI would do anything about it. This is just a way for the FBI to boost their reputation and scare off some people who would want to use crypto in crimes. At least that's how I understand this.

There are so many criminal activities happened to fiats and people gets used to this that's why they do not question it anymore but btc is a new thing to them and maybe they don't also like the approach of btc that's why they throw any negative statements that they can think of and maybe those people compare btc to paypal because we know that paypal have a reversible function where you can easily recover your money if you think you send it from a scammer but btc cannot do it although there is still another way to track cyber criminals and this news is a proof that it is possible in btc. However, I don't think haters will stop after this but they will find another angle to continue their hate in btc.

  As long as bitcoin is never accepted by the government, the people will always throw negative criticisms that will ruin the good reputation of bitcoin. But this news is something an eye opener to those who go against bitcoin because if this incident happened in fiat, then it will be very hard to recover the amount, but since its all in bitcoin, its transparency makes it easier to be traced by the FBI. There are a lot more good things in bitcoin than fiat but most people will never realized that since they always go on the side of the government.

People would really always be residing with fiat or something that they've been used to since on the time that they are aware about monetary value and other things attached to it and if there's something

new and it doesn't really fit out into their interest then you could really expect that there would really be criticism and would emphasis about its negative rather than into its pro's
which is something that it isn't surprising for someone do say. Safe haven is something that possible here on crypto but we know that not everything could be seen on blockchain could be traced up
because it depends on how someone would really be trying out to mixed out their transactions.

That is why the government just throws fake information in order to discourage people not to using crypto illegally as they can still be caught and traced. But they can manage to take all of these offenders to put in jail and that is why illegalities still exist and no way to stop them. And that is more hard for them to trace once they are using crypto and they don't want it as their biggest challenge to identifying illegal activities and the offenders due to the anonymous identity.

               I mean, what else can they do though? They're out of options and they don't want to surrender their control. That is why thet use the well-being and safety of the people as a perfect alibi to suppress the crypto community and discourage other people that are looking into coming in this industry. Just makes you hate the way governments do things. Oh well, they won't succeed anyway, some countries are even changing their stance towards crypto currencies. Just let these damn bastard to what they want for now.

When cryptocurrencies or rather when bitcoin started off, we pretty were all told bitcoin was completely anonymous and all that stuff which many of us belived but after a few went by it was actually discovered that users are just pseudonimous but not really ptivacy protected of these crypto transactions unless extra care is done such as the use of tumblers and the alike which makes it not a haven for criminals as transactions aren't hidden.

Good point! The thing is that these days criminals can never be smarter than a team of professionals hired by Feds. I mean, they used to be in the past, but not anymore. For this reason, I think, criminals will leave crypto space for good and return to their old time-tested schemes that have always worked. Maybe those large-scale money laundering crimes done on USD, you are talking about, weren't solved exactly because the criminals never touched crypto.

Hunting down crypto offenders isn't easy, but the same holds for fiat offenders as well. There are many robberies and funds aren't often recovered. And while the FBI does boost its reputation by this, I don't see why it's a bad thing. I don't mind if criminals get scared of using cryptos, to be honest. I don't think they're throwing fake information, though. They did recover the funds, so they did manage to trace them well enough. And cash is arguably way more difficult to trace than cryptos. As for banks, I think it's possible to reach pretty much the same level of traceability with them as with cryptos by creating lots of offshore companies that are parts of other companies (and the list goes on and on long enough to make tracing very difficult), so I don't think it's really harder to catch crypto offenders than non-crypto offenders. Both can be very smart and elaborate or very stupid and careless.

Yes, if they have stayed on Bitcoin, the government wouldn't have been able to capture them. The only reason why the government was able to trace them was because they tried selling the Bitcoin and converting to Fiat, that was what made it easy for the government to be able to identify them and them finally getting caught.

According to the OP's story, the couple has been holding their coin for a very long time and always making some moves with the coin on the blockchain as a way to distract the attention and make it hard for them to be traced, and all those years there wasn’t a way for the government to be able to know who they really are, until the time they decided to withdraw it. With that said I have to add that I do not support bad, so anyone who does something wrong should be punished and it is good that they were caught.

They couldn't stay in bitcoin because at some point they need their own fiat to spend it.
And there's limited options on how to spend your btc without submitting KYC.
But do you really think that they are the main culprits of the hack?
I believe there are other parties or individuals involved on this, not only this couple.
It seems to me, they are just third party for this heist. Because if you are a real hacker, you won't do such stupid mistake.
Anyway, at least some have been recovered. It took years before they got some of it.

This reminds me that criminals prefer fiat money to digital money, when Pablo Escobar's time handled a lot of money and the way they counted millions of dollars was by weighing them, just like weighing 1Kg of beef , well, the dollars and that was the way for them to count quickly because it was a lot of money that counting it normally was something almost endless, it took a long time, and like that in physical form, well it was palpable, sure, maybe that's why the great crimes have been done with fiat money than digital money.

Aside with those impressions and preference on which people do get used to deal with fiat since the beginning of time on which they do love to accumulate fiat and deal with fiat as much as they like
and now that crypto does exist or simply talks about digital currencies then they do add up some option but doesnt mean that they would leave out on something that they've been dealing through ages.
Bitcoin is indeed not a safe haven for criminals but the media and government do continue to push it up to be like this. :D

I have heard about stories of Pablo Escobar and how he used to deal with his money and how he used to burn dollars to get warmth and there are many stories along these lines, even now all the illegal deals are done with fiat currency, either in digital or otherwise but you cannot track them. Even criminals use any form of currency but the problem is all the transactions in Bitcoin can be tracked and hence doing any illegal activity is like having a money trail.

Apparently, it's always about a tray and a tray could be traced anytime. It's not always easy to perfectly organise a crime especially one that comes with huge numbers. The schemes to the success of this tracking should remain a secret as, spilling it out only leads to more and more precautionary measures by futuristic criminals.

Not to even mention the wallet addresses that has been lost due to forgotten seed phrases or even lost private keys. Perhaps it's not a crime but, should an individual source for some private investigation onto its economy of wallet address and seed phrase or private key, it should be possible. This implies, no tray, no detection or recovery hence, wallets security is completely in the users activities.

Exactly. That's what I would like to emphasize here: very soon when all those criminals come to realize that using cryptocurrencies(not only Bitcoin) can very likely lead to lead to their capture, they will stop using it, and Bitcoin will no longer be associated with criminal activity, like, ever.

Savvy ones already know, and the fact that as early as 2018, blockchain analytics provided evidence that less than 1% of all transactions were for illegal purposes didn't stop the news mills from recycling the same tired thread. Study from Elliptic (https://info.elliptic.co/whitepaper-fdd-bitcoin-laundering), which I believe has also worked with enforcement agencies.

The study looked at 4 years -- 2013-2016 -- and the highest was in fact in 2013 where it was just over 1%.


Dead horses still provide beating value to those eager to consume it.

You can't expect the government to buy into a complete decentralized technology and one that can't link a particular address to a particular individual except by monitoring its consisyent transactions across exchanges.





The blockchain in the decentralized network still covers your full privacy but once associated with an exchange the privacy is lost. The FBI was able to carry out rgeir search because the couple had a link with bitfinex which is very much a regulated exchange so doing their tracking might seem much easier

Because in the end you will be converting the money into something that is associated with a real person, unless they buy some identity to spread it, but I know there are still ways around it, yes, it can be tracked but at the same time anonymous and also easy transactions, with the real fiat it could be tracked because you have banks or if holding large amounts of money, but later on it will be bypassed and not able to detect to it, with the virtual fiat it could be tracked because you have banks

You know how the FBI works? They could wait years for the culprit to do something too stupid to catch. Obviously the hacking couple didn't have much knowledge about how to spend the bitcoin they hacked without leaving a large amount of traces behind. I don't know if they use a mixer to erase transaction traces for all the bitcoin they have spent or not, but centralized exchanges backfire for bitcoin hackers in most cases.

By far bitcoin is a tool and savvy hackers will probably know how they hide and remove any trace of the bitcoin they have. I would like to know if the bitcoins that have been labeled in his wallet "hacker wallet" can also be processed by a mixer or not, and if it can be processed so that output transactions are no longer traceable then I'd really like to know how the FBI can reveal it.

Bitcoin is not safe heaven for criminals because they use crypto for make their illegal fund into white. And many people make scam online and they have many of idears to scam people

This is so far an enlightenment to the government that bitcoin is not totally a safe haven for criminals since bitcoin brings transparency so all payment transactions can be easily observed which is a good thing to trace illegal activities. Hopefully this will change the mindset of the people that bitcoin is no longer good for criminal acts, and i guess it has never been. Illegal transactions are just a small percentage of the overall activity of bitcoin.

even though they use the services of a bitcoin mixer, the bitcoin mixer company certainly has the first data before they mix. this might be a reference for the FBI to start tracking him down.
Nothing can escape tracking bitcoin transactions. Those smart criminals will not use bitcoin. Illegal bitcoin transactions by a few criminals and currently there are many other fraudulent methods that need to be wary of.

It just takes one mistake for the specialists to find the trail and afterward they resemble a hunting dog on a blood trail. You can utilize 20 Mixer administrations and afterward you push a few coins through trade and the "sum" will raise the warning. The trades have all your data and they report dubious exchanges to the specialists.