> Some of the stolen Bitcoin successfully laundered last year has been traced to a wallet known to be used by Russian-linked criminal groups. Elliptic says this could point to the involvement of a broker or other intermediary with a link to Russia.
IMO, the most compelling story is that the thief is an attacker who had previously gained access, saw the news, and acted quickly to grab what they could. Security was not exactly a priority for these people.
While a mild pain, I don’t see Russia really having that many issues if they can’t just wire money from A to B.
Russia sells oil to India, India puts rupees or some other representation of currency into an Indian bank account and then Russia buys some finished Indian goods from that bank account.
This isn’t far from regular banking where everyone just tries to keep flows balanced. All that’s new is being unable to directly “balance” payments if they go out of whack too much.
Do they lose a few percent doing this? Probably, but the spike in oil prices makes up for it.
If you just hack you don't need any of that though. Balancing, goods delivery, currency controls... Drain a western company, mix crypto for optics, give it to Iran or DPRK or whatever in exchange for munition
Plus India and relatively reasonable countries are not especially keen on trading with Russia, while they are friends they also want to be friends with West. Remember India has big problems with China and who's gonna help them against China? not Russia
People are willing to override a lot of their ethical concerns (and accept potential long term pain in favour of short term gain) when it comes to slightly cheaper oil, gas, labour or any other need and want.
A few countries got themselves in a pickle after shutting down local coal production in favour of cheap and cleaner Russian gas…
I don't know what is widely assumed, but I personally assume it was one of the insiders who shared credentials with the pretty clear intention of making it impossible to individually attribute any shenanigans, most likely SBF himself who actually did the theft.
Given the degree of surveillance he is under, he probably didn't directly execute the sale (but I wouldn't bet too heavily even on that.)
i would guess about 0% likelihood it is him. more liekly a hacker or employee. Being CEO, Sam would have the authority to take the money himself. He would not need to hack his own exchange.
We're a talking private company in the Bahamas that has no oversight. There are no shareholders, board of directors, or audits. Sam can just go to the databases of pooled funds addresses from his admin panel and move some of those funds from A to B. Assuming anyone notices, he can pretend to be clueless. That is the scary thing about exchanges and why so many people in crypto say to self-custody. Your money is in the hands of people who can do whatever they want with it.
Didn't at least one major theft occur just as Altman was forced out as CEO?
And, in any case, avoiding attribution would be important whether or not he was CEO and especially if done when FTX was still pretending to be a viable business, since embezzlement isn’t legal and the CEO running off with a bunch of corporate assets kind of kills trust in the business.
The FBI et al are very good at surveillance. I doubt anyone close enough to SBF to be part of a criminal conspiracy would be unknown to the FBI or not under surveillance at this point.
Being _known_ by the FBI doesn’t stop crime or terror attacks. More often than not when something big happens the FBI was already tipped off, an investigation started and then somehow someway the crime/attack/incident still happens.
If someone is willing to steal from their customers and injure innocent, random public, then it seems like a small character epsilon to also steal from their employer and its investors.
Why would he need to hack his own exchange if he is CEO? He can just move the funds himself. I would wager it is not North Korea. Probably some guy in a developed country if I had to guess. That was the case with Bitfinex , for example. It's not who you would expect.
Definitely North Korea. Just like that time the feds blamed North Korea for the Sony hack and then years later it was quietly revealed to have been a disgruntled former employee.
Occam’s Razor says it’s an employee, perhaps SBF himself (because #yolo).
> Why did the FBI then start a manhunt on Reddit leading to the suicide of the falsely accused suspect?
You have your facts completely mixed up. The man falsely accused by Reddit, not the FBI, had died a month before the Boston bombings occurred. The entire reason he was accused by Reddit is because he was already known to have been missing. His body was subsequently discovered more than a month after he died.
I can't find any evidence this happened. What I did find evidence for is that Redditors started a manhunt leading to a suicide. If you actually believe this happened, please inform us.
> What I did find evidence for is that Redditors started a manhunt leading to a suicide
The guy he's talking about was already dead weeks before the Boston bombing occurred. Reddit could not have been responsible for his death, reddit libeled a dead man.
I was curious about this. The guy you're saying was falsely accused was ALREADY dead from suicide before the bombing took place. His body was found days after the bombing according to Wikipedia [1]. (took 3 seconds to find this reference)
Also its a bit ridiculous to suggest the FBI tasked redditors with a manhunt.
> Some of the stolen Bitcoin successfully laundered last year has been traced to a wallet known to be used by Russian-linked criminal groups. Elliptic says this could point to the involvement of a broker or other intermediary with a link to Russia.
IMO, the most compelling story is that the thief is an attacker who had previously gained access, saw the news, and acted quickly to grab what they could. Security was not exactly a priority for these people.