UK government friezes £6million of crypto in the last 6 months.

[pooya87]

Surveillance and censorship and of course attempts at centralization for more control will only increase and that has always been a global thing even if we mostly discuss what US is going to do in these boards ever since their president started namedropping bitcoin to get votes in their recent election. All governments want that, some more than others.

These things are like wake up calls too. They tell us to continue trying to keep Bitcoin and Bitcoin related (like exchanges) as decentralized as possible.

Side and unserious Note, maybe UK are trying to accumulate for a possible reserve

Hmmmmm

[apogio]

I doubt that these accouns were frozen due to chain-analysis (although I hate chain-analysis).
The fact that every account in a KYC exchange is linked with a real person's identity can lead to money freezing easily.
If the agencies have suspicions about the person X Z and this person has an account in a KYC exchange, it's easy for them to freeze their accounts.

[DaveF]

The question really is how much other money / assets was frozen during the same time period.
£6million? £60million? £600million? £6Billion?

It was in a centralized exchange so it's not different to the government then freezing a bank or brokerage account.
And unlike a car or house or boat they really don't have to show up and take it.


-Dave

[hero_the_bossman]

Custody is the right that everybody should think about and care about it too.

If not - then something like that will happen eventually.

[Zlantann]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Df0_Q_CV4GM

The UK government is continuing its crack down on crypto. One guy had an account with £1.5 million in it frozen. I believe it was in a Coinbase wallet. Obviously this is going to increase during the next 12 months, and it emphasises the fact that you should keep your crypto in a secure wallet, and where you are the only person that knows the private key and the seed.

There is no difference between keeping fiat money in a bank and storing pins in a centralized platform. Some traders keep coins in these platforms because they use these funds for transactions often. But for someone who is hodling such an amount, non-custodian wallet should be his only choice. We don't have to wait for this shit to happen to us before we make amends. The next country that will do the same thing the UK government has done might be your nation. Hence, there is a need to embrace decentralization to avoid regrets.

[o48o]

If i would have millions in crypto, frankly i would see Coinbase as excellent centralized option. It would be way safer then anything i could provide, and i wouldn't need to lose any sleep over losing my private key.

So even after this news, do you think that you still see them as an excellent choice for your option?

After what exactly? Legal restrictions? You do understand those AML laws apply to stocks and money already? I am happy to keep money in stocks and commodities on other regulated financial institutions, and sleep way better then keeping some cryptos in my personal wallet. I have been storing lower amounts in CEXes, so i am not sure why would i change my limit on that exactly.

I am constantly losing my keys, papers and socks, and i am extra nervous about cyber security threats, so yeah, i feel like positives like having experts looking after the wallets outweigh the negatives as long as i have government that is not a dictatorship.

[finaleshot2016]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Df0_Q_CV4GM

The UK government is continuing its crack down on crypto. One guy had an account with £1.5 million in it frozen. I believe it was in a Coinbase wallet. Obviously this is going to increase during the next 12 months, and it emphasises the fact that you should keep your crypto in a secure wallet, and where you are the only person that knows the private key and the seed.

yaaa so if you dont hold the keys, it's not technically yours, is still the golden rule when it comes to investment like this, you shouldn't leave a huge amount of money in some CEX 'cause recently there are a lot of problem occurs on those CEX. Having big funds on exchanges, particularly those that are regulated stringently, is inviting trouble. Governments are cracking down on crypto, and asset freezes will likely become more frequent. Hardware wallets are best suited for long-term storage, and non-custodial wallets with good security for everyday use are also great. Ultimately, if you don't have control of your crypto, someone else does.

[Kavelj22]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Df0_Q_CV4GM

The UK government is continuing its crack down on crypto. One guy had an account with £1.5 million in it frozen. I believe it was in a Coinbase wallet. Obviously this is going to increase during the next 12 months, and it emphasises the fact that you should keep your crypto in a secure wallet, and where you are the only person that knows the private key and the seed.

If the government can determine that you actually own a particular address and can confirm this, it can put pressure on the user in various ways to prove ownership of certain assets, and thus, it can base various accusations on this basis, even if the person refuses to disclose the secret keys (this can be under any pretext).

[davis196]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Df0_Q_CV4GM

The UK government is continuing its crack down on crypto. One guy had an account with £1.5 million in it frozen. I believe it was in a Coinbase wallet. Obviously this is going to increase during the next 12 months, and it emphasises the fact that you should keep your crypto in a secure wallet, and where you are the only person that knows the private key and the seed.

What makes you think that the amount of crypto confiscations in the UK is going to increase in the next 12 months. I'm not familiar with the crypto legislation in the UK. Did anything change in the UK cryptocurrency legislation and regulations? I know that the UK Labor party are a bunch of communists, who want people's money, but there must be reason why they are freezing people's accounts. I don't want to watch this Youtube video, but I can guess that this guy wasn't paying his taxes. I agree with most forum members. Having an account with 1.5 million  in a centralized crypto exchange is a big mistake.

[Faisal2202]

The UK government is continuing its crack down on crypto. One guy had an account with £1.5 million in it frozen. I believe it was in a Coinbase wallet. Obviously this is going to increase during the next 12 months, and it emphasises the fact that you should keep your crypto in a secure wallet, and where you are the only person that knows the private key and the seed.

Scammers, hackers, are too smart, they aren't going to place their funds on a Coinbase wallet or on any centralized exchange. They are smart enough that they don't even touch USDT when they steal because they know USDT can be frozen even on noncustodial wallets. If they are that smart, then how come they are placing their 6 million worth of crypto assets on an exchange or place where they don't own the key?

And authorities seized them. It is 90% obvious to me that the funds being seized must be seized due to tax evasion, not some other criminal activity and if they will pay the taxes, maybe they could get them back if that's an option. The news should cover stories of those individuals who lost even 100 pounds in this case.

[Kelward]

The UK government's goal is to regulate crypto. Simple. This is what every government wants. They want to be in charge. They want to know what is coming in, where it is going to and what it is being used for. And also if taxes are being paid on it. If you don't want the government all up in your business you already know what you should do.

PS: If you didn't watch the video, please do there is so much to learn about what is going on.

It's true, what the UK government is doing is to regulate cryptocurrency, they want to be in charge and know their movements. I don't have a problem if they're freezing suspected crypto accounts that might be linked to criminal activities and terrorism. I believe that the freezed crypto owners can make a case to proof that their coins are genuine, if they can't it'll mean that their crypto is taken from them. Governments can only trace cryptocurrency that are stored in centralized exchanges and people that are looking for privacy should know better than relying on the exchanges to store their coins.

[Felicity_Tide]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Df0_Q_CV4GM

The UK government is continuing its crack down on crypto. One guy had an account with £1.5 million in it frozen. I believe it was in a Coinbase wallet. Obviously this is going to increase during the next 12 months, and it emphasises the fact that you should keep your crypto in a secure wallet, and where you are the only person that knows the private key and the seed.

I took my time to watch the video, and all I can come up with is that there is a form of dictatorship in this whole issue. The voice behind the YouTube video mentioned that authorities go after one's digital assets first, even when there hasn't been any order to carry out an investigation on a person. That alone gives a clearer picture on what  the authorities are trying to achieve.

But come to think of it, how come a person with over £1.5M worth in crypto assets fail to understand the importance of self custody. Centralization will always remain centralized no matter how secure their service claims to be.

[Outhue]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Df0_Q_CV4GM

The UK government is continuing its crack down on crypto. One guy had an account with £1.5 million in it frozen. I believe it was in a Coinbase wallet. Obviously this is going to increase during the next 12 months, and it emphasises the fact that you should keep your crypto in a secure wallet, and where you are the only person that knows the private key and the seed.

This is a good example of The right money with the wrong head.

£1.5 million is not a small amount of money, why is that amount deposited on a centralised exchange in the first place? For what to be precise? Or this is dirty money? Because this is very hard to believe.

I will like to walk away thinking that this money was never clean, no one will ever leave that much money on a centralised exchange, believe me, if you are in the UK and you are into crypto, you have no business with centralised exchanges.

Be careful using one, get a hardware wallet and store your assets on that, be more friendly to Dex rather.

[DeathAngel]

Obviously you shouldn’t keep a large % of your stash on a centralised exchange but there are times when we do it. The person in question may have been waiting for a limit sell order to trigger. You often leave money on exchanges for a short period when doing this. Governments don’t instruct exchanges to freeze money for no reason though. It’s very likely the victim of this freeze was a criminal.

[Synchronice]

How can someone hold that kind of money in a centralised exchange? Not to be harsh, but the person typically got what he deserved. Coinbase is one of the exchanges that can easily freeze users funds once they suspect anything or the 3-letter government agencies ask them to do it.

Binance has 9 VIP levels (one Regular). If your 30-Day Trade Volume is lower than 1 million or you own less than 25 BNB, you are a regular user. VIP levels start from 1 Million 30-Day Trade volume / 25 BNB and go up to 4 billion 30-Day Trade volume and 5,500 BNB. What do you think, how many VIP users does Binance have? I'm simply wondering and at the same time I want to say that probably there are lots of people who keep millions of dollars in their trading account, When I check sell order on Binance, I often see more than 10 Bitcoin orders.

[justdimin]

How can someone hold that kind of money in a centralised exchange? Not to be harsh, but the person typically got what he deserved. Coinbase is one of the exchanges that can easily freeze users funds once they suspect anything or the 3-letter government agencies ask them to do it.

Even if you want to hold money in a self-custodial wallet, it shouldn't be centralised tokens/coins. The worst of it is tether; they can freeze your fund while it's in your private wallet immediately. The government asks them to do that because they are fully open to obeying and taking orders from them.

I agree with this sentiment. If you are in crypto world, you know that exchanges are not a great place to keep your money in. Not because of any governmental issue, that is rare, there are hundreds of billions in coinbase, and only a few million taken by government, a lot more is getting hacked and that is why you shouldn't keep it in exchanges. It is not as secure as keeping it yourself, it is not going to make a great return for you and you should be careful about it.

I personally put mine into hardware wallet, that way it would not be all that scary if someone tries to get it, since it would be near impossible. I mean I don't have this much money Wish I did, but even with a lower amount, I still keep it more secure.

[coolcoinz]

If I were living in the UK that would be at least 2 different warnings.

1. My government is not doing well if it has to brag about 7m of confiscated funds in 6 months. To the average government this is literally nothing, like a grain of sand on the beach. For instance in 2024 the UK imported £568 billion in goods. Billion! 7 million is the value of like 500m of highway.
2. I should never hold any money on exchanges because the gov is snooping there and might want to steal it from me.

This is not a big deal, even if you're a citizen, but definitely something to worry about in the long run. If they care about every single million and treat it like a priority, they're poor and soon will go after other things like private property. Expect increased taxation.

[Josefjix]

It's conibase using an advanced tools to track out larger balance on their exchange nowadays? Why would this runners locate this huge sum and it's not proper to freeze this amount for any reason except the funds came from an illegal source, who knows.

That means, the statement "not your keys not your coins" has never spread through the whole system and that some users hasn't fully understood what it actually means,

[tabas]

If i would have millions in crypto, frankly i would see Coinbase as excellent centralized option. It would be way safer then anything i could provide, and i wouldn't need to lose any sleep over losing my private key.

So even after this news, do you think that you still see them as an excellent choice for your option?

After what exactly? Legal restrictions? You do understand those AML laws apply to stocks and money already? I am happy to keep money in stocks and commodities on other regulated financial institutions, and sleep way better then keeping some cryptos in my personal wallet. I have been storing lower amounts in CEXes, so i am not sure why would i change my limit on that exactly.

I am constantly losing my keys, papers and socks, and i am extra nervous about cyber security threats, so yeah, i feel like positives like having experts looking after the wallets outweigh the negatives as long as i have government that is not a dictatorship.

That makes sense if you've been dealing with those problems. And I think it's a decent choice for having that kind of trouble, and I guess that you're aware of what others from the forum might tell you about that. What I can learn from this is that it's a case-to-case basis and the preference that we have on how to keep ourselves in a better security. Time will come that the better option is going to come out based on the scenario and circumstances that we're facing.

[The Cryptovator]

These types of mistakes I have done with Binance. I had trusted Binance blindly at one time. Due to a transaction from my client, they seized my funds, though later they released my funds and closed my account. For this time I was able to recover my funds. But I believe most of the time users can't recover this type of frozen funds. So this is the lesson for everyone.

I learn from my previous mistakes. But if we always want to learn from our life, then we may lose big things as well. It's hard to believe how a crypto user stores such funds in a centralised exchange. For me, I don't store big funds right now in a centralised exchange anymore. Keep small funds for trading purposes. I am holding my funds in a hardware wallet nowadays.