A difficult start to the year for Luke Dashjr. One of the original Bitcoin developers and one of the most prominent figures in the community just announced that almost all of his BTC had been stolen.
The original Bitcoin developer loses all his BTC
Luke Dashjr announced the news on his Twitter account late yesterday. He later explained that he lost “many” of his bitcoin (BTC) and asked for help from the community :
PSA: My PGP key has been compromised and at least a lot of my bitcoins have been stolen. I have no idea how. Help please. #Bitcoins
—@[email protected] on Mastodon (@LukeDashjr) January 1, 2023
Part of the funds would be sent to the CoinJoin mixer, which allows transactions to be made anonymous. In an update a few hours later, Luke Dashjr also confirmed that all of his BTC holdings would be stolen. The published addresses show that 213.6 bitcoins have been transferred, which corresponds to the current price for a sum of 3.5 million dollars.
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A “nightmare” for Luke Dashjr
The developer has reportedly contacted the FBI, who said they are not interested in the situation. When asked how the community could help him, Luke Dashjr sidestepped the question, and described the situation as a “nightmare” :
To wake up from this nightmare
—@[email protected] on Mastodon (@LukeDashjr) January 2, 2023
In particular, the Bitcoin developer claims that he does not know how these BTCs were stolen and clarifies it “Everything is compromised». We have few details on how he secured his assets, at most we know he didn’t 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 address self-hosted wallets:
Sad to see an OG too #Bitcoins Core Developer lost over 200 BTC ($3.5 million). Self-custody has 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 about the case should emerge so that he understands himself as such an important member of the Bitcoin community managed to lose this considerable sum, especially if it was stored in a cold wallet. You will remember from time to time that it is always preferable to keep your cryptocurrencies in “cold” wallets, and to adopt the best security measures.
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