Luke Dashjr, one of the first developers in Bitcoin history, announced on Twitter that the PGP key had been compromised. Therefore, he announced that his Bitcoins were stolen. According to Dashjr, the amount of Bitcoin lost is still unknown. However, a significant portion of it went to the 1YAR6opJCfDjBNdn5bV8b5Mcu84tv92fa wallet via the CoinJoin mixing service. Dashjr claims he basically lost all of his BTC. Here are the details…
Bitcoin developer suffered a hack attack
The developer said in a January 1 post on Twitter that alleged hackers somehow gained access to the PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) key, a common security method that uses two keys to gain access to encrypted information. In the thread, he shared a wallet address to which some of the stolen BTC was sent, but did not disclose how much of his BTC was stolen.
Looks like some of it is coinjoined to 1YAR6opJCfDjBNdn5bV8b5Mcu84tv92fa
— @[email protected] on Mastodon (@LukeDashjr) January 1, 2023
It is stated that the wallet address in question has a total of 216.93 BTC. That shows four transactions worth $3.6 million at current prices. Dashjr said the attackers had “no idea” as to “how” he had accessed his key. However, some in the community pointed to a possible link to a previous Twitter post by Dashjr, which stated that on November 17, his server had been “newly” compromised.
Dashjr is one of the most knowledgeable names in the cryptocurrency world. However, despite this, he sought help by resorting to social media for this action. The uncertainty about how much Bitcoin was stolen only complicates Dashjr’s case. The developer became even more despondent when it turned out that almost all of his Bitcoins had been taken.
Binance CEO also commented
Dashjr told a user in his latest Twitter thread that he noticed the latest hack after receiving emails from Coinbase and Kraken about login attempts. The incident also caught the attention of Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, who offered support with a post on January 1.
I’m sorry to see you’ve lost so much. Our security team has been notified to monitor. If it gets in front of us, we freeze it. If there’s anything else we can help with, please let us know. We deal with these frequently and have relationships with lawmakers around the world.
Sorry to see you lose so much. Informed our security team to monitor. If it comes our way, we will freeze it. If there is anything else we can help with, please let us know. We deal with these often, and have Law Enforcement (LE) relationships worldwide.
— CZ 🔶 Binance (@cz_binance) January 1, 2023
Some in the crypto community speculate that lax security may be responsible for the loss. On January 1, a user calling themselves SatStandard in a Reddit thread suggested that Dashjr may not have taken the November 17 security breach “seriously enough”. He later suggested that the Bitcoin developer “did not keep the different activities separate.”
Isn’t it actually a hack?
Meanwhile, several people have suggested that this might not be a hack. One user suggests it was part of an unfortunate “boat crash” ahead of tax season. In this context, a boating accident refers to a joke about people trying to avoid paying taxes by claiming that they lost all their BTC in a “tragic boating accident”.
The news also sparked a debate around self-custody wallets, which became a hot topic after the collapse of FTX last year. Zhao from Binance, who previously warned the crypto community about self-surveillance, said:
It’s sad to see even a legendary Bitcoin core developer lose more than 200 BTC ($3.5 million). Personal custody has different risks.
Online social media BTC influencer Udi Wertheimer questioned whether self-custody is a viable and safe option. “You shouldn’t manage your own keys,” she commented. “That doesn’t mean self custody is bad. But you shouldn’t be managing the keys directly,” he said.
