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Sleeping beauty Bitcoin wallets wake up after 14 years to the tune of $2B

(www.marketwatch.com)
191 points aorloff | 3 comments | 04 Jul 25 18:41 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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duttish ◴[04 Jul 25 19:26 UTC] No.44467188[source]▶
Whoever got these wallets better sell them and get a good security company on rotation quickly before anyone find out who they are. Seems like wrench attacks been been happening a lot more the last year.
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Marsymars ◴[04 Jul 25 19:47 UTC] No.44467326[source]▶
I don't really get these; there's not a ton of difference between using a wrench to threaten someone with a bunch of Bitcoin vs using a wrench to threaten someone with a bunch of any other liquid asset that could be used to buy bitcoins.
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jedberg ◴[04 Jul 25 19:57 UTC] No.44467391[source]▶
This is the other edge of that double edged sword of "no regulations". It's a lot easier to steal bitcoin with no consequence because there isn't an entire financial system backed by people with guns to help you if you are wronged.
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1. diggan ◴[04 Jul 25 20:26 UTC] No.44467614[source]▶
> there isn't an entire financial system backed by people with guns to help you if you are wronged

It's not the "financial system" that comes and hunts criminals with guns, but police, acting based on what laws they seen has been broken. And stealing $3 billion is as illegal if it was Bitcoins, as if it was Euro or USD.

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2. Larrikin ◴[05 Jul 25 00:44 UTC] No.44469222[source]▶
There are essentially no criminals that are stealing crypto where the police will have jurisdiction. It's main use case outside of speculation is committing international fraud and theft with no consequences.
3. hnaccount_rng ◴[05 Jul 25 15:20 UTC] No.44473358[source]▶
The point isn't about a change of legality. It's about a change of enforceability! In the normal regulated financial system _every_ entity you can interact with is known to someone who is a) good at keeping paper traces and b) extremely motivated to provide them, given appropriate motivation, i.e. a properly formed request by authorised parties. And that limits the number of times you can do anything scammy to "few" before you need to switch identities

So in your scenario: The 3 billion will reappear at some point and they will raise flags. And at that point there is a convenient rendezvous point between law enforcement and the perpetrators. And we can all quibble about whether the authorisation is appropriate or not (not all "requests" are requests and most won't even need anything close to a court order). But it's damn convenient to follow the money