How Law Enforcement Tracked Down $3.6 Billion in Bitcoin - Ep.319
On Tuesday, the US government seized $3.6 billion in bitcoin from the 2016 Bitfinex hack and arrested two individuals, Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan, on charges of money laundering. Tom Robinson, cofounder and chief scientist at the blockchain analytics firm Elliptic, breaks down how law enforcement was able to seize the BTC, what techniques the alleged money launderers used to avoid capture, and who could have pulled off the initial hack. Show highlights:
background on the 2016 Bitfinex hack who was arrested this week and why how the US government gained access to the private keys in Lichtenstein’s and Morgan’s control why AlphaBay, a now-defunct darknet website, was crucial to law enforcement’s effort to track down the stolen Bitfinex funds what money laundering techniques were used to cash out the stolen Bitfinex funds before this week’s arrests whether, as blockchain analytics technology advances, it will always catch up to be able to trace the movements of crypto as its laundered why using Monero, a privacy coin, to cash out stolen funds is a red flag why Tom does not think the two individuals arrested this week for money laundering the stolen Bitfinex funds were the original hackers
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Episode Links
Tom Robinson
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomarobinson?originalSubdomain=uk Twitter: https://twitter.com/tomrobin
Information on the Bitfinex hack + arrest:
DOJ Information: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/two-arrested-alleged-conspiracy-launder-45-billion-stolen-cryptocurrency https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1470211/download Elliptic Coverage: https://www.elliptic.co/blog/elliptic-analysis-new-york-husband-and-wife-arrested-for-laundering-5-billion-in-bitcoin-stolen-from-bitfinex-in-2016 Unchained Coverage: https://unchainedpodcast.com/feds-seize-3-6-billion-in-btc-connected-to-bitfinex-hack/ CoinDesk coverage https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/02/08/us-officials-seize-bitcoin-from-2016-bitfinex-hack/ Decrypt: https://decrypt.co/92529/bitfinex-billion-bitcoin-who-keeps-it The Defiant: https://thedefiant.io/bitfinex-leo-surge/ Bitfinex statement: https://www.bitfinex.com/posts/766
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How Widespread Is Money Laundering in Crypto? - Ep.72
Yaya Fanusie, director of analysis at the Center on Sanctions and Illicit Finance at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and Tom Robinson, chief data officer and cofounder of blockchain analytics firm Elliptic, discuss how common money laundering is in crypto, how jihadist groups are using it, and how privacy coins (really Monero) affect their work. (The reason why the dark markets haven't much used Zcash surprised me.) We also discuss bad state actors using cryptocurrency, such as Venezuela's efforts with the metro and North Korea's alleged Bitcoin ransomware attacks, and how, leaving aside bad state actors, central bank cryptocurrencies would compete with decentralized ones. Plus, we discuss what impact OFAC blocked addresses list will have.
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Yaya Fanusie: https://twitter.com/SignCurve
Center on Sanctions and Illicit Finance at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies: http://www.defenddemocracy.org/csif
Tom Robinson: https://twitter.com/tomrobin
Elliptic: http://www.elliptic.co
Yaya and Tom's report on Bitcoin laundering: http://www.defenddemocracy.org/content/uploads/documents/MEMO_Bitcoin_Laundering.pdf
New AML regulations on cryptocurrencies in Europe: https://www.elliptic.co/our-thinking/5th-aml-directive-eu-regulation-cryptocurrency
Money laundering in ICOs: https://www.elliptic.co/our-thinking/ico-risk-why-aml-compliance-matters
Yaya's op-ed on the Venezuelan metro in CoinDesk: https://www.coindesk.com/crypto-investors-stay-away-venezuelas-petro/
Russia's blockchain plans: http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/technology/346476-blockchain-technology-may-give-russia-its-next-sputnik-moment
What jihadists are doing with crypto assets: https://www.thecipherbrief.com/article/exclusive/international/terrorist-networks-eye-bitcoin-cryptocurrencys-price-rises
https://www.thecipherbrief.com/column/private-sector/the-new-frontier-in-terror-fundraising-bitcoin
Yaya's essay on self-policing in CoinDesk: https://www.coindesk.com/crypto-community-must-use-blockchain-self-police/
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Metabase & open source Business Intelligence (Interview)
Sameer Al-Sakran and Tom Robinson from Metabase joined the show to discuss Metabase - their open source tool that’s laying the foundation of their goals for open source business intelligence.
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Featuring:
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Jerod Santo – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Show Notes:
Metabase
metabase/metabase
Metabase Discussion
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
280 North, Inc. - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Objective-J - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Cappuccino (application development framework) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
AWS | Amazon Redshift - Cloud Data Warehouse Solutions
Justin Dorfman: @metabase looks awesome, can’t wait to try it out. How do you plan to sustain it? Will there be a pro version?
Jeff Dean (computer scientist) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
John Carmack - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
TensorFlow
The Changelog #149: React.js, React Native, Flux, Relay, and GraphQL with Facebook
The Changelog #171: Living Clojure, ClojureScript, and more with Carin Meier
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!