The lack of advocacy for the funds to be returned to victims displays the perverse incentives birthed by the US Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has taken control over approximately 127,000 BTC belonging to Chen Zhi, also known as “Vincent,” the founder and chairman of Prince Holding Group (Prince Group), a multinational business conglomerate based in Cambodia, who has been charged with wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy for directing Prince Group’s operation of forced-labor scam compounds across Cambodia.
Zhi held individuals "against their will in the compounds engaged in cryptocurrency investment fraud schemes, known as 'pig butchering' scams," the DOJ writes, "that stole billions of dollars from victims in the United States and around the world. The defendant is at large."
...read more at therage.co
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Has there been info as to how the USG gained physical (or whatever you want to call it) control of the coins?
This ...
... is quite ambiguous.
That's a good question, I've asked myself the same thing. I don't think that info's been made public, so it's all just speculation right now.
I watched a video yesterday by an Brazilian YouTuber who's into info security and he's a Bitcoiner. He was saying it might have been an exploit using an old, known vulnerability in the primary key generation where the entropy was low, apparently only like 32 bits.
I can't explain it properly either, but it seems like they managed to figure out what software was used to generate that wallet's private key, and then they just did a brute force to find the actual key.
The real question is: why is America still limiting itself to accumulating Bitcoin through seizures rather than following a real Bitcoin accumulation program as was advertised?
Because they want bitcoin to support the dollar, not the other way around.
Because it's easier to steal within a legal framework than to spend. Also, this current administration is a penny-pinching operation.
If they just keep the seized coins and don't dump them, that's already huge.
I mean... before they would just sell the bitcoin.
The state:
Don't Steal. The state hates competitionDon't Steal. The state hates competition
There's a critical step most people never take. Realizing the system itself is a bigger issue than the current man in power.
Yes, the state is a very large machine led by one person each term, but many others live at its expense, and that is the real problem, which is difficult to solve. In Portugal there is a popular saying regarding thieves: 'A thief who steals from a thief has 100 years of pardon.' It rhymes in Portuguese, Ahahahh.
hits hard
I think it's lazy to claim the perverse incentive is due to the existence of the reserve alone.
I'd pin it on the decision made to exclude just about any way to fund it that does not involve stealing from criminals and/or their victims where those can be identified.
Oh whoops, didn't realize this was already posted!
https://m.stacker.news/78583
consider this angle the DOJ could pioneer a blockchain based restitution protocol using a portion of these funds to automate payouts to verified scam victims via zero knowledge proofs...