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Merged Bitcoin - Part 3

Husband-wife team arrested trying to launder money stolen in the 2016 Bitfinex hack:

The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced on Tuesday that a married couple was arrested and charged for their alleged links to cryptocurrency stolen from a 2016 hack of Bitfinex, a virtual currency exchange.

Ilya Lichtenstein, 34, and his wife Heather Morgan, 31, were arrested in New York City and charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to defraud the United States, DOJ officials said on Tuesday.

The duo repeatedly misled financial institutions and virtual currency exchanges about their identities and about the origins of their Bitcoin, according to federal prosecutors, who said the money was cashed out and used to purchase gold, NFTs and other items, such as a $500 Walmart gift card.

The stolen currency from the hack is currently valued at $4.5 billion, and law enforcement has seized over $3.6 billion in connection to the incident.
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https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/593285-doj-seizes-36-billion-in-stolen-cryptocurrency-arrests-couple-in

Really surprising anyone doing this would be bold enough to remain in the Unites States. That's kinda the whole point of internet scams, you're not supposed to be someplace that police can get you.

I deeply, deeply regret to inform you that this is the rap video of the woman who was just arrested as part of an alleged husband-wife scheme that laundered some $3.6 billion in crypto.
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https://twitter.com/kevincollier/status/1491107221857796097?cxt=HHwWgoDUjceHvbEpAAAA

Heather Morgan also seems to have been a contributor at Forbes for a bit. Very strange.
 
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:dl:

I have a pretty high tolerance for weird annoying music videos, and I couldn't believe it was only 59 seconds into the song when I clicked off. I'll never know what the other 2:45 contained.

You would think that a guy literally named Lichtenstein could find his way to a tax haven?
 
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carlitos said:
:dl:

I have a pretty high tolerance for weird annoying music videos, and I couldn't believe it was only 59 seconds into the song when I clicked off. I'll never know what the other 2:45 contained.

You would think that a guy literally named Lichtenstein could find his way to a tax haven?
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Somehow I imagined hackers that had billions of dollars would be cooler. I blame hollywood.
 
I didn't think they actually managed to launder 3.6B as much as that's what the amount they had was trading at when they got busted.

I don't even know how that would be possible. It's like back 15 years ago some fools stole a Brinks truck and it turned out to be a massive shipment of nickels. It's a sort of fun thought experiment on what to do with it.

Honestly, if I stole that much bitcoin I'd be looking to sell all of it to some rich fools for like maybe a tenth of a cent on the dollar (3.6M) or some other manageable amount and let them deal with it.
 
Dr.Sid said:
Well if there are billions of money to be laundered, NFTs make a lot more sense.
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NFTs are tracked per transaction. The best way to go would be to use a completely anonymous coin to move it around a bunch then settle it into a different wallet all together.
 
Pixel42 said:
Another forum I use asks for donations via Paypal. I don't have a Paypal account but there was a way to do so using my credit card, so I did. But last time I tried to do so Paypal insisted I give them my mobile phone number. So no more donations from me, I'm afraid.
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It's part of the verification system so that they can check you are who you say you are and are allowed to use the card I think.
I know that they use a two step verification for the login to my personal and business Paypal accounts that sends a text message to my phone with a one time code.
 
One reason I still have trouble believing bitcoin and all the others are money is that there aren't people sending me emails trying to get me to buy money.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
One reason I still have trouble believing bitcoin and all the others are money Federal reserve notes is that there aren't people sending me emails trying to get me to buy money Federal reserve notes.
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ftfy.

Of course, if you are not being spammed by currency traders then that is a good thing.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
It's part of the verification system so that they can check you are who you say you are and are allowed to use the card I think.
I know that they use a two step verification for the login to my personal and business Paypal accounts that sends a text message to my phone with a one time code.
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Yes I understand that, but I still don't want to give Paypal my mobile phone number.
 
Pixel42 said:
Yes I understand that, but I still don't want to give Paypal my mobile phone number.
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Lots of sites take those authenticator apps as an option instead of mobile codes for verification. I have the google authenticator, lastpass authenticator and I once had the Microsoft one. It also has the benefit of being much more secure than a text to your mobile, and you don't give anyone your number to use them.

ETA - sounds like if you use PayPal on a computer, you can use the Symantec authenticator app instead of giving your mobile #.

PayPal offers 2FA via text messages or via Symantec’s VIP (Validation & ID Protection) authenticator app. Authenticator apps are more secure and avoid a lot of the downfalls of SMS. However, SMS is more practical if you do not use a smartphone. Consider your threat model and choose the best mode for you. (If you use the PayPal mobile app, note that PayPal mobile is only compatible with text messages.)
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Late last night I watched a program about economics on YouTube
and I captured the exchange captioning bit on crypto currencies.

Front Row: Calling A Super Bubble With Jeremy Grantham

ES: Jeremy, I'm curious to know if in the 12 months since we last spoke,
you've changed your view on crypto currencies?

JG: I have spent a lot of time on crypto in the last year on crypto currencies.
They may not be good for buying groceries. They may not be a store of value.
They may be highly correlated with the speculative stocks. They may come
down 40 percent, 50 percent. Like the SPECs, but they do something. Way
over my head to understand.

ES: Do you buy the argument that there is an important difference between
Bitcoin, on the one hand, and at least a couple of other crypto currencies on
the other? And I'll name them. Ethereum, that's the blockchain, Ether is the
coin, and Solana. And the difference, and I'll do my best to articulate it, is
that those other blockchains are actually building blocks for new businesses,
that will prove to be revolutionary because they will eliminate things, or help
to eliminate things that I suspect you don't like. Transactional friction in the
banking system and rent taking that remains embedded in legacy financial
institutions.

JG: So the question is, is there a technology block chain that will turn out
to be very useful, whether done by the corporations and governments and
everybody else. I am sure the answer is yes. There is a useful technology,
etcetera, etcetera. Does this justify trillions of dollars of perceived wealth?
No, it doesn't.

ES: It might amount to trillions of dollars of wealth eventually.

JG: If they can find a usefulness for it when it's integrated into the economy.
It will perhaps, facilitate productivity, like many ideas do. Very few ideas of that
kind floated around and were capitalized at trillions of dollars, even through they
had an enormous impact on the economy. Blockchain should be like one of those.

ES: So, maybe, not quite as much of a crypto skeptic.

JG: You could say the Internet, by the way of the Internet, has created
enormous value. But it didn't float around Internet units, which were
capitalized and became worth trillions of dollars, and they deliberately
went out of there way to make the Internet a facilitator, and not a way
of amassing money in itself.
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The host goes out of his way to make it sound like Jeremy Grantham
has moderated his view on crypto but it didn't really look that way to me.
Then I found an article in Business Insider that clarifies the matter further.


Jeremy Grantham Quotes by Harry Robertson

The most important and hardest to define quality of a late-stage bubble is in
the touchy-feely characteristic of crazy investor behavior. But in the last two
and a half years there can surely be no doubt that we have seen crazy investor
behavior in spades… especially in meme stocks and in EV-related stocks, in
cryptocurrencies, and in NFTs.

...

Cryptocurrencies leave me increasingly feeling like the boy watching the naked
emperor passing in procession. So many significant people and institutions are
admiring his incredible coat, which is so technically complicated and superior
that normal people simply can't comprehend it and must take it on trust.
I would not.
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Oh, look! There's a kitten stuck up a tree...
 
Solitaire said:
Late last night I watched a program about economics on YouTube
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The YouTube economists have been so depressingly negative lately that I have given up watching them. They seem to only differ on how severe the collapse of all currencies (crypto or otherwise) is about to be.
 
psionl0 said:
The YouTube economists have been so depressingly negative lately that I have given up watching them. They seem to only differ on how severe the collapse of all currencies (crypto or otherwise) is about to be.
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I have been wondering lately how much actual money has been ploughed into the cryptoverse, including purchased power.
That may not be difficult to work backwards from a current use about the amount Norway uses.
In any event it would be worth knowing.
 
Samson said:
I have been wondering lately how much actual money has been ploughed into the cryptoverse, including purchased power.
That may not be difficult to work backwards from a current use about the amount Norway uses.
In any event it would be worth knowing.
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:confused: How does that have anything to do with YouTube economists? Do you just go about quoting random posts before posting about something completely different?
 
psionl0 said:
:confused: How does that have anything to do with YouTube economists? Do you just go about quoting random posts before posting about something completely different?
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Collapse might stop about where total market cap equals actual cash put in.
So not randomly quoting your post.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
One reason I still have trouble believing bitcoin and all the others are money is that there aren't people sending me emails trying to get me to buy money.
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Right, which speaks to the fact that cryptocurrencies aren't really intended to be "currencies" in the practical, real-world application of the term. There are a few gimmicks around that let you pay for, say, an internet subscription with Etherium for instance; but most people who have cryptocurrencies don't use it in that way. It is just cheaper and easier in every case to use a native "real" currency, for one thing; and for another, cryptocurrencies aren't being marketed to the public as a pure exchange medium. You're not supposed to buy Bitcoin so that you can use it to pay a bill online; you can already do that with dollars. You're supposed to buy Bitcoin because it's allegedly going to make you wealthy by appreciating endlessly, unlike the dollar bills in your wallet. There is no other reason to buy cryptocurrency other than out of the expectation that you'll eventually be able to sell it for more real money than you've sunk into it.
 
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