Unchained - How Law Enforcement Tracked Down $3.6 Billion in Bitcoin - Ep.319

Episode Date: February 11, 2022

On Tuesday, the US government seized $3.6 billion in bitcoin from the 2016 Bitfinex hack and arrested two individuals, Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan, on charges of money laundering. Tom Robinso...n, cofounder and chief scientist at the blockchain analytics firm Elliptic, breaks down how law enforcement was able to seize the BTC, what techniques the alleged money launderers used to avoid capture, and who could have pulled off the initial hack. Show highlights: background on the 2016 Bitfinex hack who was arrested this week and why  how the US government gained access to the private keys in Lichtenstein’s and Morgan’s control why AlphaBay, a now-defunct darknet website, was crucial to law enforcement’s effort to track down the stolen Bitfinex funds what money laundering techniques were used to cash out the stolen Bitfinex funds before this week’s arrests whether, as blockchain analytics technology advances, it will always catch up to be able to trace the movements of crypto as its laundered  why using Monero, a privacy coin, to cash out stolen funds is a red flag why Tom does not think the two individuals arrested this week for money laundering the stolen Bitfinex funds were the original hackers Become a Premium Bulletin Subscriber! Become a premium subscriber to my Bulletin newsletter, and you’ll get access  to:  a premium-only Discord group   premium-only interviews   the opportunity to ask questions ️  the chance to weigh in on guests for Unchained and  whatever other future offerings we add to the mix The special launch price until February 14 $2.99/mo or $29.99/year. Starting on February 15, the price increases to $4.99/mo or $49.99/year. Join now! Get a Signed Book Plate! Many of you have asked me how you can get a signed copy of the book. Here’s how: Pre-order the book, which you can do at bit.ly/cryptopians. Make a social media post about the book that includes the pre-order link, bit.ly/cryptoptians or to the book on any bookseller of your choice. Send a copy of your receipt to hello@unchainedpodcast.com with the subject line, “signed book plate.” In the email, include a pdf of your receipt + a screenshot of or a link to your social media post + the address to which you’d like me to send the book plate + the nameof who you’d like me to dedicate the book plate to. If you show a pre-order receipt that shows you bought more than one format of the book, such as an audiobook and a hardcover, you can get two signed book plates. Finally, if you sign up for the Bulletin premium subscription plus do all the above to get a signed book plate, you’ll also receive a POAP. Thank you to our sponsors! Crypto.com: https://crypto.onelink.me/J9Lg/unconfirmedcardearnfeb2021  Episode Links Tom Robinson LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomarobinson?originalSubdomain=uk  Twitter: https://twitter.com/tomrobin  Information on the Bitfinex hack + arrest: DOJ Information: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/two-arrested-alleged-conspiracy-launder-45-billion-stolen-cryptocurrency  https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1470211/download  Elliptic Coverage: https://www.elliptic.co/blog/elliptic-analysis-new-york-husband-and-wife-arrested-for-laundering-5-billion-in-bitcoin-stolen-from-bitfinex-in-2016  Unchained Coverage: https://unchainedpodcast.com/feds-seize-3-6-billion-in-btc-connected-to-bitfinex-hack/ CoinDesk coverage https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/02/08/us-officials-seize-bitcoin-from-2016-bitfinex-hack/  Decrypt: https://decrypt.co/92529/bitfinex-billion-bitcoin-who-keeps-it  The Defiant: https://thedefiant.io/bitfinex-leo-surge/ Bitfinex statement:  https://www.bitfinex.com/posts/766  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi, all, two announcements. First, many of you have asked me how you can get a signed copy of the book. Here's how. First, pre-order the book, which you can do at Bittley slash Cryptopians. Second, make a social media post about the book that includes the pre-order link, Bittley slash Cryptopians, or links to the book on any bookseller of your choice. Third, send a copy of your receipt to hello at unchainedpodcast.com with the subject line, signed bookplate. in the email include a PDF of your receipt, a link to the social media post,
Starting point is 00:00:33 and the address to which you'd like me to send the bookplate, plus the name of who you'd like me to dedicate the bookplate too. Finally, as you'll hear in the next announcement, I am also launching a premium subscription of my bulletin newsletter. If you do all the above, plus become a premium subscriber, you'll also receive a POAP. Now for the second announcement. I'm launching a Discord group for premium subscribers to my bulletin newsletter.
Starting point is 00:00:57 subscribers will also get access to interviews with up-and-coming projects, have a say in which guests and topics are covered on unchained, get to weigh in on what questions are asked, and will have access to subscriber-only chats with guests. The introductory price, available now, is $2.99 a month or $29.99 a year. The regular price of $4.99 a month or $49.99 a year will kick in on February 15th. Again, if you become a premium bulletin subscriber, plus pre-order the book and make a social media post about it that includes a pre-order link, then you will also receive a po-op.
Starting point is 00:01:34 We will put all this information in the show notes and in the daily newsletter, so don't worry about memorizing it. I just wanted to share with you a blurb that Willie Wu, on-chain Bitcoin analyst and author of the Bitcoin Forecast Newsletter, wrote about my book. Willie said, deeply researched, this book is an important body of work and must for the inside story of Ethereum, complete with all of its grit and drama. If you have not yet pre-ordered your copy of the Cryptopians, then head to Bitley slash Cryptopians. That's B-I-T-L-Y-S-C-R-Y-P-T-O-P-I-N-S to pre-order. Again, the link to pre-order is Bitley-S-Cryptopians. And now on to the show.
Starting point is 00:02:22 Hi, everyone. Welcome to you. Unchained, you're no-hype resource for all things crypto. I'm your host, Laura Shin, a journalist with over two decades of experience. I started covering crypto six years ago, and as a senior editor at Forbes, was the first mainstream reader reporter to cover cryptocurrency full-time. This is the February 11th, 2022 episode of Unchained. With the Crypto.com app, you can buy, earn, and spend crypto in one place. Download and get $25 with the code, Laura. Link in the description. Brave Wallet is the first secure wallet built natively in a Web3 crypto browser with no extension required. You can store, manage, and grow your crypto portfolio all from a safer wallet.
Starting point is 00:03:05 Visit brave.com slash unchained to get started. Today's guest is Tom Robinson, co-founder and chief scientist at Elliptic. Welcome, Tom. Hi, Laura. Thanks for having me. Two arrests were made this week in connection with, with the BitFinex hack in 2016, and the government also seized $3.6 billion in stolen Bitcoin linked to that hack. I've seen some misinformation about what exactly happened, and I think some people are making
Starting point is 00:03:36 erroneous assumptions. So let's just, for the listener, explain what happened this week. So this week, two individuals were arrested for allegedly laundering the proceeds of a hack that happened back in 2016. So in 2016, the cryptocurrency exchange BitFinnax was the victim of a hack and around 120,000 bitcoins were stolen from it. At the time, that was worth around $70 million. But of course, over the intervening period, it has increased a lot in value.
Starting point is 00:04:12 At what point, those funds were worth about $8.2 billion. So as well as arresting these two individuals, you'll think. authorities were able to seize quite a large proportion, around 80% of those funds. So arrests and a seizure of most of these stolen funds. And the arrests were for money laundering, not for the hack itself, correct? No. So it's still unclear who performed the hack, who actually stole the funds. That isn't made clear, for example, in the documentation that's been released this week. So no, that's still unclear.
Starting point is 00:04:54 So oftentimes when the government tries to seize cryptocurrency, they may apprehend the person who has possession of the private keys to that money, but they're not always able to actually seize the money. So how did the government do that in this instance? So it seems as though these two individuals were storing the private keys for these wallets using a cloud storage provider. and so they were able to gain access to this storage and therefore gain access to the private keys themselves.
Starting point is 00:05:26 So perhaps not the best security practices. If you're storing billions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency, you should probably be using something like a cold wallet, maybe a hardware wallet and what to store your funds. And just talk a little bit about that. Why is that a more secure way to hold funds? Because you have ultimate control of the funds in those circumstances. So if you're storing your private keys in cloud storage, then you're entrusting them to a third party.
Starting point is 00:05:57 And of course, that third party might, for instance, get hacked or they might share the content of that cloud storage with more enforcement, as apparently occurred here. So in general, a better and more secure way of holding crypto assets is to hold. the private keys yourself, so only you have access to them. So you might write it down, write it down on a piece of paper and put it in a safe deposit box, or you might use one of these specialist hardware wallets that are now available in the market. So in this case, the file that held the private keys, it was a file that listed the 2000 addresses where the original hacked Bitcoin from the BitFinex hack, you know, where all those transactions had been sent and also the private keys. So the government decrypted this file because it was
Starting point is 00:06:50 an encrypted file. Typically, how easy is it for an outside party to decrypt an encrypted file? I personally don't know if this is like an everyday capability or if this is something that was previously unknown that the government was able to do. So I'm not sure exactly how it was done in this case. And to be clear, we weren't atolletic actually involved in this case. Everything I'm describing here is based on the investigations we've been doing over the year using blockchain analytics and through the documentation that's been shared this week. But in general, the process of cracking a password on an encrypted file really depends on how long your password is.
Starting point is 00:07:33 For short passwords, that's a relatively easy task. For long and complex passwords, it's almost computationally impossible to do. So it really depends how long that and how complex that password was. And so going back to the original BitFinex hack, which occurred in August 2016, that happened via 2,000 unauthorized transactions from BitFinex to an outside wallet that was labeled 1CGA4S. So even though the statement of facts did not go into detail about the hack itself, just that fact alone, What does that say to you about how the hack was likely conducted? So I'm not sure what it tells us really.
Starting point is 00:08:20 I mean, there really isn't much clarity on exactly how this hack took place, to be honest. And that's not something I've looked into into detail. What we focused on, Leptic is looking at how the funds were being laundered, where it was being moved to, and potential ways to identify the people behind it. So in this case, the money was moved in multiple different ways. So after the hack, where was the money moved? So that actually changed over time. So this was an interesting case in that we're able to see how the money laundering techniques
Starting point is 00:09:00 evolved over about five or six years. So the first movements of funds were in January 2017. and some of that went to a darknet marketplace called Alpha Bay. So Alpha Bay at its peak was the largest darknet marketplace in existence selling everything from narcotics to hacking tools to fake IDs. So this was interesting. Why would somebody send stolen funds to a dark net marketplace? Well, it also can act as a mixer.
Starting point is 00:09:35 So what a mixer does is break the blockchain transaction trail and make it very difficult to trace it any further. So that's probably what they were trying to do here. By depositing it at Alphabet and withdrawing it again, they're able to break that transaction trail. Or so they thought. And so how is it that it wasn't actually broken and the government was able to follow it? Well, so, and this is just my theory. So in a few months after they started using. using Alpha Bay. Alpha Bay was actually seized and taken down by law enforcement agencies,
Starting point is 00:10:11 including US law enforcement agencies. And what this would have enabled them to do is see all of the internal transaction records from Alpha Bay and therefore potentially link those stolen incoming funds from BitFINX to the outgoing transactions. And that's what we actually see being described in the statement of fact that was released this week. You see the Bitcoins move into Alpha Bay, but the investigators were somehow able to trace it through Alpha Bay and continue tracing the funds to accounts of exchanges in the name of some of the suspects of the rest of this week. Yeah, the statement of facts also mentioned that there were four different crypto exchanges. There were unhosted Bitcoin wallets. And I should say those four
Starting point is 00:11:01 crypto exchanges, who actually owns those accounts is not known. And then, There were also additional accounts that were actually connected to Elia Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan, who were the two individuals arrested. I mean, the laundering here was fairly sophisticated. There were multiple steps of removal between the suspects trying to cash out and the original illicit source of funds. I think what they didn't count on was Alpha Bay being taken down by law enforcement and law enforcement having access to that data. Yeah, so that was how the funds were laundered at first, but that did change over time. So, for example, when Alpha Bay went down, they instead sent some of the stolen bitcoins
Starting point is 00:11:45 to a darknet marketplace called Hydra. So Hydra is interesting. It's a Russian language dark net marketplace. It's the largest dark net marketplace ever to have existed by some margin, and it's still active today. So it was probably the obvious choice. if they were going to continue using a darknet market as it makes them. All right.
Starting point is 00:12:07 So in a moment, we're going to talk about more of the laundering techniques used, but first a quick word from the sponsors who make this show possible. Web3 means freedom from big tech and Wall Street, with more control and better privacy. But your crypto wallet is a weak point. Most wallets are browser extensions, a Web 2 technology. That means the same old risks, app spoofing, fishing scams, and theft. Brave Wallet is different.
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Starting point is 00:13:27 Get up to 8% cash back instantly, plus 100% rebates for your network. Spotify and Amazon Prime subscriptions. Download the crypto.com app now and get $25 with the code Laura. Link in the description. Back to my conversation with Tom. So you started talking about some of the laundering techniques, but there were actually many. So I don't know if you want to discuss some of these like fictitious identities they were using or moving the money and smell amounts, etc.
Starting point is 00:14:01 Yeah, absolutely. So another of the techniques they used were to pass the funds through exchanges where the accounts of those exchanges had been created usually with fictitious identities or at exchanges where you didn't have to provide any identity at all. So that was another laundering technique they used. Towards the end, so there was some big movements of funds from the theft in January 2021. on. And around this time, they started using what is known as coin join transactions. So these are special types of Bitcoin transactions, which are very difficult to trace through. So in general, the way that Bitcoin tracing works is you can assume that all of the inputs of a Bitcoin transaction are all owned by the same person. That kind of makes sense. If you're going to send somebody
Starting point is 00:14:55 some Bitcoin and you're using Bitcoin and various different addresses to send from, then you should be able to make the assumption they all belong to the same entity. But in a coin joint transaction, that's not the case. What happens is people come together and each of their addresses is a different input to a single transaction. And so you can't link an output of that transaction to an input. So that's quite technical, but basically what it achieves is breaking, again, breaking the blockchain trail and make it very difficult for law enforcement to continue to follow the money trail. And in fact, they started using a tool called Wasabi Wallet, which makes Coinjoins very easy
Starting point is 00:15:38 to perform. And we see Wasabi involved in a lot of being used by people involved in a lot of this activity in Bitcoin. Quite a large proportion of all proceeds of crime and Bitcoin. now make their way through wallets associated with wasabi wallet. And they were also converting to privacy coins. Can you talk about that as a technique as well? Yes.
Starting point is 00:16:04 So in general, the concept of chain hopping is where you start with one crypto asset and exchange it for another one. And so that generally happens through centralized exchanges. And again, that breaks the bot chain. trail because you can see, for example, proceeds of crime and Bitcoin going into an exchange, but you can't trace it any further because those Bitcoins have been exchanged for another crypto asset. However, if the exchange is compliant, is keeping records, then law enforcement can always go to them, perhaps with a subpoena, and ask them, you know, what happened to these funds,
Starting point is 00:16:44 where they conversed into a different asset? And if so, can you give us the transaction IDs? So in theory, they should be able to continue to trace the funds. There was mention made in the Statement of Facts about Minero. I'm not sure how significant that is and whether any Monero tracing was used in this investigation. Because from what's described here, I'm not sure that would have been necessary in order to tie this activity to the suspects the rest of this week. The Statement of Facts also talked about a technique they allegedly used called appeal chain. What is that? Yeah, so if Peel Chain is a series of transactions from a wallet where at each step, at each transaction, a small amount is taken from the wallet and deposited, say, at an exchange.
Starting point is 00:17:34 And so this might take place over hundreds of steps, hundreds of transaction steps. And what that means is that, first of all, the amounts being deposited at that exchange are smaller, and so are less likely to set off. you know, a red flag in terms of potential money laundering. And it also makes it more difficult to trace back the ultimate source of those funds. So crypto exchanges typically use blockchain analytics tools like Mycalyptics to trace the source of funds for every transaction. So here, perhaps they were trying to introduce more separation between their deposit of the exchange and the illicit source of funds to try and overcome that. In this statement of facts, the IRS special agent who wrote a Chris Jenskes wrote in the complaint that for some of the accounts where the funds were allegedly sent,
Starting point is 00:18:29 he was not actually able to obtain the names of those account owners. So then how did he link those to Liechtenstein and Morgan? That's not entirely clear to me, whether that information is necessary to do this. I think that even if you don't have the identity of the account owner, as long as you know their transactions, then you can continue to follow the transaction trail until you get to an exchange that is willing to give you an identity.
Starting point is 00:18:59 So perhaps that's what happened here. So in general, when you look at all the different laundering moves that were allegedly used here, would you say that these were pretty sophisticated laundering techniques or maybe they were for the time, but is it that just blockchain analytics will always eventually catch up, or what's your take? So, yes, the laundering techniques used here were reasonably sophisticated, and they became more sophisticated over time.
Starting point is 00:19:30 I think what this shows is that both blockchain analytics capabilities and law enforcement capabilities have advanced over this period, such that even advanced laundering can still be overcome. You know, I think key to this was that takedown of Alpha Bay in 2015. 17. That was a huge international law enforcement operation, which is clearly still paying dividends today. So by targeting those key enablers of the cybercrime economy, it can pay off in unexpected ways, such as potentially in this case. And so obviously for that instance, that's not necessarily that the technology became more advanced and better. It's really that there was
Starting point is 00:20:16 kind of an event that just gave a lot of data to the government. So what do you think is the future for blockchain analytics as privacy techniques mature and as probably more of the industry, frankly, moves probably toward more privacy by default blockchains? Yeah. So I think it is true that blockchain analytics has advanced significantly, and that did play a role here. What blockchain analytics basically does is map to blockchain and link certain wallets to certain actors, you know, exchanges, don't know marketplaces, ransomware wallets. And so the more entities you have labeled and identified, the more leads there are for law enforcement to follow, because it's more likely that a flow of funds from some kind of illicit activity will eventually reach an
Starting point is 00:21:07 entity that is labeled in these blockchain analytics tools. When it comes to privacy coins, I think that the challenge for a criminal is how do they cash out the manoe? Where are there any exchanges that are going to allow you to cash out billions of dollars worth of Monero without being quite suspicious about your source of funds? I think that's one of the key challenges with using privacy coins and these types. circumstances. So what remains a question mark at the end of all this was who hacked BitFinex back in 2016. Why do you think that was not part of the statement of facts or, you know,
Starting point is 00:21:51 part of the arrest? So perhaps it's because the people responsible for the hack are somewhere outside of the reach of US law enforcement. You know, we've seen that a lot with ransomware and dark net marketplaces, perhaps in the country where there is no extradition treaty, where they aren't able to arrest people. That's certainly a possibility. So even though that wallet that received the hacked funds, the 1CGA4S wallet, was in with a private keys, so that was in their possession, you,
Starting point is 00:22:28 it sounds like you're implying that perhaps the hackers were separate people from Liechtenstein and Morgan? Potentially, yes. I think the skills necessary to hack an exchange are quite different to the ones that are required to launder a huge amount of cryptocurrency. So we often see this. We see different actors engaged in a theft or the actual cybercrime, and then a different set of actors engaged in the actual money laundering. Okay. So essentially, since they had the keys to that wallet that received the funds directly, then would one theory be, which I have seen online, that they bought the hacked funds for some discount from the actual hacker or something like that? Or how would
Starting point is 00:23:14 they come in possession of those keys? Potentially, yes. They might have brought those funds off the hacker, or they might have been funneling back, funneling the proceeds of the laundering back to the hacker in some way. But this is just speculation. I don't think there's any hard evidence about that in the public domain yet. Okay. All right. So we will have to see how this plays out. Clearly,
Starting point is 00:23:37 crypto Twitter was, you know, fixated on the news this week. And it was definitely, you know, we didn't even go into the personalities involved. But I really just wanted to lay out the facts here. So thank you so much for illuminating all of us.
Starting point is 00:23:54 My pleasure. Thank you. Don't forget. Next step is the weekly news recap. Thanks for tuning in to this week's news recap. BlackRock Eyes Crypto, KPMG jumps down the rabbit hole. A year after BlackRock CIO, Rick Reader, mentioned that the asset management giant was starting to dabble in Bitcoin. CoinDesk revealed that BlackRock is gearing up to offer crypto trading services to investor clients.
Starting point is 00:24:27 BlackRock will begin by offering lending services using crypto as collateral. Additionally, one of CoinDesk's sources says Climbaboard. clients will have the ability to trade crypto via Aladdin, Black Rock's investment management platform. As covered in Thursday's Unchained Daily, Chris Perkins, president of Coin Fund, said that this was an important move for two reasons. Quote, first, Aladdin supports many of the largest sovereign wealth, pensions, and asset managers in the world, and this connectivity will solve many of the operational challenges that have been holding these institutions back, he wrote in a message. Second, Aladdin typically releases new functionality based on client demand.
Starting point is 00:25:09 This tells you that many of the largest institutions in the world are asking for crypto capabilities. For context, BlackRock currently has $10 trillion in assets under management, which is about five times the size of the market capitalization of all crypto assets. In related news, the Canadian arm of the accounting giant, KPMG, announced the addition of both Bitcoin and Ether, to its balance sheet on Monday via Gemini. The firm also hinted at future investments in defy, NFTs, and Metaverse tokens. ENS fires Brantley Milligan after controversial tweets resurface. This week, Ethereum Name Service community steward Brantley Milligan was fired after the unearthing of a tweet from May 2016, which said,
Starting point is 00:25:58 Homosexual acts are evil. Transgenderism doesn't exist. abortion is murder, contraception is perversion, so is masturbation and porn. Uniswops Hayden Adams, rainbows dame.eath, EnS's future Alicia, and numerous others condemned Brantley's words. As a big believer in ENS and member of the community, this is not something that the face of ENS can stand for, wrote dame.eath. Brantley did not back down in his words frequently citing his religious beliefs.
Starting point is 00:26:31 Quote, I'm not really interested in debating the theology right now, but what I believe is the mainstream traditional Christian positions held by the world's largest religion. It's not exactly fringe, noted Brantley on Twitter. He also published a similar statement on Discord. In response, True Names Limited, the firm providing funds for the Ethereum Name Service Dow decided to terminate the contract of Brantley on Monday.
Starting point is 00:26:57 Ethereum Name Service Dow also voted to indefinitely remove Brantley from his position as a community steward for the protocol, though this process is still ongoing. Brantley has been a valued team member of TNL for the past three years. However, as a team, we felt that his position with TNL is no longer tenable. Many of you were hurt by Brantley's comments over the past 24 hours, and we strongly believe that ENS should be an inclusive community, explained Nick Johnson, lead developer of Ethereum Name Service.
Starting point is 00:27:29 Despite being fired, Brantley still holds the title of director at the ENS Foundation and is the largest ENS Delegate, meaning he holds the most voting power in the ENSDAO, according to Inouye Makoto, an ENS developer. Because of other recent incidents in which old tweets expressing discriminatory or offensive views had caused trouble for other members of the crypto community, a debate began over whether cancel culture was coming to crypto. Binance makes a $200 million strategic investment in Forbes. Forbes and Magnus Opet Acquisition Limited, the firm Forbes is partnering with via a SPAC or special purpose acquisition vehicle to go public on the New York Stock Exchange,
Starting point is 00:28:15 recently received $200 million in funding from the cryptocurrency exchange, Binance. Disclosure, Forbes is my former employer. The move will make Binance one of the two largest owners of the publication, and two Binance executives will join the Forbes board. Forbes plans to go public by the end of this quarter and would trade under the ticker symbol, FRBS. The news comes about a year and a half after Binance filed a defamation lawsuit against Forbes media and two of its writers.
Starting point is 00:28:47 The CFTC makes a move to wrangle control of crypto. On Wednesday, all eyes and ears were on, of all places, a Senate Agriculture Committee meeting, on cryptocurrencies. During the meeting, CFTC Chairman Rosden Benham made his case to bring crypto into the regulatory fold. According to the block, Chairman Benham asked for a 30% increase in the CFTC's operating budget for 2022, after acknowledging that the CFTC currently lacks the resources necessary to regulate digital assets as it usually only handles futures and derivatives. Benham cited as precedent, the CFTC's expansion.
Starting point is 00:29:27 following Dodd-Frank, which granted the regulator purview over swaps markets and increased its budget by nearly 50%. Sam Bankman-Fried, the CEO of FDX, who also participated in the meeting, seemed to like the idea of the CFTC providing more regulatory clarity, adding, I would love to see the CFTC play a more active role. In related news, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, or FDIC, announced its 22 priorities this week, which included evaluating the risks related to crypto. Wait, so did GameStop sell millions in IMX tokens? The short answer is yes.
Starting point is 00:30:10 GameStop did just sell off millions of dollars worth of IMX tokens. Last Thursday, GameStop announced a partnership with the Mutable X, an Ethereum Layer 2 solution, and disclosure, a former sponsor of my show. to launch its own NFT marketplace. As part of the deal, Imutable X set up an incentive fund for GameStop that will provide up to $150 million in IMX tokens for the gaming company's expansion into the NFT space.
Starting point is 00:30:38 However, it appears that Amutable X granted the tokens to GameStop without any vesting or lock-up requirements. So when GameStop received roughly 39.17 million IMX tokens after hitting the first few milestones of the partnership, the gaming company could do anything it wanted with the tokens, based on data from EtherScan and appears that GameStop began dumping IMX tokens on the open market. The Gaming Giant made five IMX transactions in February, in amounts such as 6.5 million IMX, a little over 8 million IMX, and 2 million IMX, with two of the transactions coming before
Starting point is 00:31:15 the immutable partnership announcement. As of now, GameStop's Ethereum mattress holds just 20.18 million of, the 39.16 million IMX tokens it received since last week, meaning that roughly $50 million in IMX tokens have been sent elsewhere. The block reports that tokens were sold on Binance, OKX, and Wopi. Notably, IMX's token supply is only about 225 million coins, meaning Game Stops IMX token transfer of approximately 19 million tokens equates to roughly 8.4% of all IMX tokens being moved. The flood of coins into the market from GameStop appears to have suppressed the price of IMX, which hit a peak above $4 on the heels of the GameStop
Starting point is 00:32:02 announcement last week, only to immediately drop back down under $3, where it had been trading over the previous 14 days. Zinga to launch a blockchain game this year. Zinga, the mobile gaming company that produced Farmville and Words with Friends, has plans to jump into the blockchain Metaverse, according to Axios. The firm is reportedly looking to expand its blockchain team from 15 to as many as 100 members. Additionally, Zinga revealed that it hopes to release a blockchain game in 2022 that will target crypto-centric gamers. On that note, Matt Wulf, Zinga's blockchain chief, said that company plans to separate its NFT game ideas from its current ones. So Crypto, Words with Friends, does not appear to be in the works.
Starting point is 00:32:47 Speaking of crypto adoption, CNBC reported that Salesforce told employees at a private event online that it would be building an NFT cloud. Russia will reportedly recognize crypto as currency, sort of. A report from Commissante, a Russian newspaper, revealed this week that the Russian government and Bank of Russia are preparing a draft law that will make cryptocurrencies and analog of currencies rather than just simply digital financial assets.
Starting point is 00:33:19 The newspaper reports that the proposal will be done before February 18th. There's been conflicting news coming out of Russia. Earlier in January, the Bank of Russia was reportedly pushing for a blanket ban on crypto. However, separate accounts show that President Vladimir Putin is in favor of regulating rather than banning crypto mining within the industry. Time for fun bits. NFTs and cryptos. to appear in Super Bowl Sunday.
Starting point is 00:33:46 You've probably seen Matt Damon traversing down gilded halls to proclaim that fortune favors the bold, while an astronaut with a not-so-slightly planted Satoshi nameplate clanks behind him.
Starting point is 00:34:00 This ad by Crypto.com, which Disclosure is a sponsor of my shows, is just a taste of how crypto-commercial are about to take over the biggest television event of the year. Super Bowl Sunday's main broadcast, where 30-second ads, can cost up to $7 million will feature spots from Coinbase, FTX, and Crypto.com.
Starting point is 00:34:20 Bitby will run an ad on the Canadian broadcast. Miller Light will be running an advertisement in DeCentraland, aka the Metaverse. In addition to the crypto takeover of commercial breaks, the National Football League is also bringing crypto to the actual game. Each person at the game will receive a commemorative NFT from the NFL. Finally, parting words from Heather Morgan. No weekly news recap this week would be complete without a rap from the new crypto celebrity, or should I say, crypto rap celebrity, Heather Morgan, she of Bitfinex hack money laundering fame.
Starting point is 00:35:01 Hold on, what I got to do, yodo, our mission is noble. Yeah, I want to be a mogul. My tundies going global. Build an Empire Constantinople. You mean Istanbul? Get icy like fro yo. All got to stay vocal. Bitcoin Ethereum. Hodel.
Starting point is 00:35:20 AMC GameStop Yolo. The hedge you store squeeze with ease, but they say no pump and dumps, please? What? Thanks so much for joining us today. To learn more about Tom, Elliptic, and the Bitfinex money laundering arrests this week, check out the show notes for this episode.
Starting point is 00:35:37 Unchained is produced by me, Laura Shin, with Lop from Anthony Yun, Daniel Ness, Mark Murdoch, Shashonk, and CLK transcription. Thanks for listening.

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