US Seizes 15B BTC, Indicts Chairman: Forced Labor Scam Compounds, Crypto Fraud | Hacker News Reader

US Seizes 15B BTC, Indicts Chairman: Forced Labor Scam Compounds, Crypto Fraud

justice.gov

20 pointseevilspock17 comments

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15 billion USD worth of bitcoin, not 15 billion bitcoins.

The title should really be corrected. I interpreted it the same way.

Previous discussion from a few days ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45580981

Trainwreck of a headline. Suggestion: DOJ seeks $15B Bitcoin forfeiture from Cambodian forced labor scam.

In the media: https://thediplomat.com/2025/10/us-uk-announce-sweeping-sanc...

How did they seize it?

What I read is they hacked wallets that had the 'Milk Sad' vulnerability (predictable private key), but I'm skeptical as that's an old CVE, IMHO it's more likely an infrastructure or communications hack or a wrench attack - the suspect is now 'missing'.

A bit conspiratorial to think the DoJ "wrenched" the keys out of the suspect, especially since the suspect is now missing

Of course it is, OTOH the nature of this 'enterprise' has been visible for quite a while now, and I'm sure, investigated quite intensively (by more than DoJ), and 'missing' only means that the general public doesn't know where he is.

“15B in BTC” — please fix the title

There can only even be 21M BTC ever. Title is derp'd

Until they change the alogrithm anyway

There is no “they” able to change the algorithm.

A consensus of miners is still a "they".

Even a unanimous agreement of all miners would be unable to change consensus rules. These rules are not set by miners.

Miners choose which version of the software they run. The software defines the consensus rules.

If sufficient mining power prefers software versions with specific consensus rules, the rules are effectively changed. By a "they".

This is simply not true. BTW I was a bitcoin core developer for many years, and am one of the few people who have actually changed bitcoin’s consensus rules.

If a quorum of miners decide to run hard fork changes, then they just disappear from the network once the changes trigger. No miner can force a user to change their consensus rules.

A soft fork is different. But increasing the bitcoin issuance can never be a soft fork.

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