Quote:
Originally Posted by burn_this_city
Anyone else wondering how the US government managed to get the key to the Colonial Pipeline ransom wallet so quickly?
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My guess is they stupidly transferred the BTC over to an exchange that the FBI quickly leveraged and got the private keys. Alternatively someone came forward and gave them the private key to a hot wallet.
The key issue with crypto is most people would need an exchange to monetize which is where the government still has leverage. At the end of the day they still need to launder that money as the FBI was able to trace everything going to and from that address. As more and more businesses adopt crypto as payments, its possible we see more vanilla laundering occurring. However, by being able to publicly track the movement of funds, it almost makes it easier to track.
Think following marked fiat USD bills after a bank robbery one by one versus just being able to run a program over the blockchain and do that for you with a click of a button.