US Recovers Millions in Bitcoin Paid to Colonial Pipeline Ransomware Hackers

breaking911.com

1 point·hammock··5 comments

That might be good for Colonial, but it highlights the fact that BitCoin, and all other cryptos, ARE NOT YOURS. They can taken from you at the stroke of a pen, unlike real assets like gold, property, etc.

I'll say it again: "If you can't touch or hold it in your hot little hands, it doesn't really exist."

That's why a Gold Certificate is NOT the same as physical gold. A paper dollar is not the same as a silver dollar.

The gov't can take your physical gold just as easily as they can take the computer with your wallet. Nothing is yours if the state says it's not.

How did US officials "seize" bitcoin? Were they working with an exchange? The Bitcoin addresses were said to be based in Russia. Was the Russian government involved?

Seems that the bitcoin was conveniently stored in a wallet on a computer in Northern California. https://duo.com/decipher/u-s-seizes-usd2-3-million-from-dark...

Still doesn't explain how they got a hold of the wallet's private key. Yes, it is possible to trace bitcoin between wallets and if you're working with the NSA it seems also easy to get a hold of IPs that accessed them. But getting to the actual computer that was behind an IP, much less the cryptographic key that may or may not be stored on it, is a different question. Maybe they don't even want people to know the process, to prevent others from evading it.

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