A difficult start to the year for Luke Dashjr. One of Bitcoin’s original developers and one of the most prominent figures in the community just announced that almost all of his BTC had been stolen.
Original Bitcoin developer loses all his BTCs
Luke Dashjr announced the news on his Twitter account at the end of the day yesterday. He then explained that he had lost “a lot” of his bitcoins (BTC) and called on the community for help :
PSA: My PGP key is compromised, and at least many of my bitcoins stolen. I have no idea how. Help please. #Bitcoin
—@[email protected] on Mastodon (@LukeDashjr) January 1, 2023
Part of the funds would have been sent to the CoinJoin mixer, which makes it possible to anonymize transactions. In an update a few hours later, Luke Dashjr also confirmed that it would be all of his BTC holdings that were stolen. The published addresses show that 213.6 bitcoins have been transferred, which corresponds to the current price at a sum of 3.5 million dollars.
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A “nightmare” for Luke Dashjr
The developer reportedly contacted the FBI, which he said was not interested in the situation. Asked how the community could help him, Luke Dashjr evaded the question, and described the situation as a “nightmare” :
To wake up from this nightmare
—@[email protected] on Mastodon (@LukeDashjr) January 2, 2023
Notably, the Bitcoin developer claims not to know how these BTCs were stolen, and clarifies that “Everything is compromised». We have few details on how he secured his assets, at most we know that he did not use a multisig. He confirmed that his cold wallet had also been compromised.
Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of Binance, reacted to these posts and said that if the stolen BTC arrives on the exchange, they would be frozen. He also took the opportunity to tackle self-hosted wallets:
Sad to see even an OG #Bitcoin Core Developer lost 200+ BTC ($3.5 million). Self-custody have a different set of risks.
We will try to monitor and see where we can help. 🙏 https://t.co/9eGZ7AFgC2
— CZ 🔶 Binance (@cz_binance) January 1, 2023
Details should emerge on the case, so that it is understood how such a prominent member of the Bitcoin community was able to lose this considerable sum, especially if it was stored on a cold wallet. It will be recalled from time to time that it is always preferable to keep your cryptocurrencies in “cold” wallets, and to take the best security measures.
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Journalist at Cryptoast, I fell into the pot of cryptocurrencies a few years ago. I am passionate about the innovative technologies that stem from the blockchain and I like to find the most crispy information to share with you.
Marine Debelloir
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