As public understanding of how digital assets work becomes nuanced with the spread of cryptocurrencies, the language of () “anonymity” gradually becomes a thing of the past. High-profile law enforcement operations, such as the one that recently led to the US government seizing some $3.6 billion worth of cryptocurrencies, are especially helpful in driving home the idea that assets whose transaction history is recorded in a ledger open and distributed ledger are best described as “pseudonyms,” and that design is not particularly conducive to those who want to get away with stolen funds.
As much as criminals try to hide the movement of ill-gotten digital money, at some point in the transaction chain they are likely to invoke addresses to which personal data has been linked. This is how it happened in the Bitfinex case, according to documents made public by the US government.
Too comfortable, too soon A fascinating statement from a special agent assigned to the Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) details a process by which US federal government operatives got a whiff of the couple suspected of laundering the money stolen in the 2016 Bitfinex hack.
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