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so the guy went ahead and stole 154 millions from a business bank account, deposited it in coinbase and he just casually bought almost 4k btc and then withdrew

so the guy went ahead and stole 154 millions from a business bank account, deposited it in coinbase and he just casually bought almost 4k btc and then withdrew it and coinbase didnt even say a word? and then I see poeple defending btc price action being legit if this guy was able to do that, in a company that is part of nasdaq, has sec watching it and so on, imagine whats happening on binance and all those others offshore/shady exchanges

aeternum 5y ago
>this guy was able to do that The guy was caught in short order so he really wasn't able to do it. You can steal money pretty easily in the traditional financial system with a simple forged check. Money will likely go through initially but you also will likely be caught in short order.
- firekvz 5y ago
  He already had the BTC in a cold wallet, meaninig that the whole process was completed (deposit USD into coinbase, exchange to BTC, withdraw it) My point is, coinbase still allowed 154millions USD to be washed on it's exchange. By a random guy who clearly didnt even bother cover his back, imagine what actual organized crime is doing with offshores exchanges.
  - bogota 5y ago
    Im trying to imagine it can you help me? Just seems like a classic slippery slope fallacy to me though.
  - fastball 5y ago
    Clearly the funds weren't "washed", because they traced them... KYC isn't meant to prevent money from moving at all, it's meant to enable tracing of the money.
    - firekvz 5y ago
      They traced him, because, it seems that he wasn't the smartest criminal in the planet. Just the fact that he was in tokyo (japan), instead of a non US aligned country, such as Russia or China, that he had his private keys easy accesible and that he stayed in BTC instead of going for another crypto more anon friendly, says a lot of the stupid nature of this "criminal" But once again, my whole point is, coinbase allowed a random person to deposit 154 millions USD and withdraw 3.8k btc with absolutely no problems? and in a quickly way, according to the original article I think its safe to assume that the banks said, okay the money went to coinbase, and coinbase just said yeah about that, he used the money to buy BTC and withdrew it to this wallet and thats about it the guy was located cause he didnt even try to hide himself, the rest is history. my point remains, if this, that was a such dumb crime, managed to convert the stolen funds into BTC using coinbase with absolutely no problems, then its easy to assume that real and strong money going to biggest offshores exchanges is from illicit sources.
      - fastball 5y ago
        Why are you holding Coinbase responsible but not the bank?
        firekvz 5y ago
        Im not holding anyone responsible, im just mentioning that, it's obvious that a lot of the money flowing into crypto its not legal, this sets a clear example of how easy stolen money was washed using coinbase without much problems, its a clear indicator for the big picture, when exchanges like binance has 10x more volume, where do u think that money is really comming from? and that is actually happening on those exchanges with money flowing?
        fastball 5y ago
        You're making a point about how it was so easy for the perp to get money into crypto while seemingly ignoring the fact that it was equally easy for him to move the money around via the traditional banking system.
  - fomine3 5y ago
    Yeah. It is impressing that a single person could buy $150M crypto.
  - epivosism 5y ago
    You can't use "someone being caught" as evidence of "how easy it is not to get caught" - because you would also treat NOT getting caught to prove the same thing. This would mean that no matter what evidence you observe you would reach the same conclusion... which means the article made no difference to you. To go into more detail, claims like "he was only barely caught" shadow the possibilities of him being caught later, which never had a chance to be realized. i.e. it may appear that he was caught randomly but we owe it to truth to at least dig into what would have happened if that had failed - and that likely requires a domain expert to know the actual security measures in place.
    - monkeycantype 5y ago
      In my highly regulated and audited work, there are cases where people on money laundering lists initiate a transaction, and we can’t block it because it would tip them off that they have been detected, in theory some other department or organization is supposed to follow up
  - throwawaycities 5y ago
    But why focus on the cryptocurrency portion of what happened when what happened first was all fiat based? A single person controlled the transfer instructions via email for a $150M insurance transfer. By falsifying the email instructions for the fiat transfer $150M was sent directly to his personal account (no red flags there). Then he was able to transfer $150M from his personal account to coinbase (no red flags there). Why is your focus on the coinbase conversion from fiat to Bitcoin?
    - GauntletWizard 5y ago
      Because the fiat was easily recoverable in the traditional financial system. If they had not caught the guy, or he had already moved the BTC to a mafia-run account, not one he still controlled, it could be lost forever - The great 'benefit' of BTC is that the government has a hard time seizing it.
      - lazide 5y ago
        Yet they seem to have had no trouble doing so in this case?
      - throwawaycities 5y ago
        You do realize financial fraud within the traditional financial system preexisted cryptocurrency right?
        user-the-name 5y ago
        Yes, and there is tons of hard work being put into it all the time to stop it. This does not happen in crypto.
        throwawaycities 5y ago
        Hard work to stop it? There was a global insurance company that sent an international wire, at least two banks with multiple transactions, and coinbase which is a KYC compliant publicly traded company. Despite ample opportunity, no one stopped this, rather they all facilitated it. This all originated from an email containing fraudulent wire instructions, trying to pin all this on cryptocurrency is less sound than blaming email. Despite all the deflection, law enforcement was able to recover the Bitcoin. Contrary to your point law enforcement and regulators alike have successfully brought legal actions (civil) and prosecutions (criminal) in the blockchain space just as they have against traditional institutions. The insurance company, banks, and coinbase are all to happy cryptocurrency was involved at some point so they can do some magic hand waving, and blame cryptocurrency. I would ask why bother, but obviously it’s a successful PR campaign to excuse their own ineptitude.
  - Consultant32452 5y ago
    I worked at a company headquarters and some guy in accounting just switched the banking info for one of the vendors to his own bank info. He stole money for literally years. I don't know how it worked for so long because somehow the vendor must've been getting paid, maybe he was also falsifying invoices or something. I dunno. Anyways, no crypto and this was the corporate headquarters for a company most Americans would know.
  - thealig 5y ago
    Do note that the Coinbase business account was created by him fraudulently in the name of the subsidiary of the company (Sony Life) , but actually he had no authorization to do so. [0] [0] -https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21165768-us_vs_rei_ishii_bc_forfeiture#document/p11 https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21165768-us_vs_rei_i...
  - paulpauper 5y ago
    I don't think ppl appreciate just how big crypto is. $150 million is tiny compared to how big crypto is ($2.3 trillion). We're taking $60 billion of BTC being traded daily. And same for tether and eth. It's just insane. So it's possible that $150 million could slip through. Crypto is huge. Way bigger than online gambling, sports betting, etc.
    - user-the-name 5y ago
      Crypto "market caps" are complete 100% fiction. They do not represent any kind of real value that exists. They mean nothing.
      - wruza 5y ago
        The company I work at trades crypto deposited/withdrawn from real USD and EUR bank accounts as it would be with any stock exchange broker account, all legal. You may now reduce your fiction percentage to 99.9…9% at least, unless I’m lying for some conspiracy reason.
        user-the-name 5y ago
        It's not just that prices are complete nonsense and massively manipulated. It's also that multiplying the current price by the number of coins just doesn't mean anything. The resulting number doesn't represent anything real.
        wruza 5y ago
        multiplying the current price by the number of coins just doesn't mean anything It is also true for any regular stock. “Market cap” is just an indicator value of a stock at a given time, not the value, and no one expects all of it to be sold at that sum, because of market dynamics. The resulting number doesn't represent anything real regardless of the asset class. The only difference between crypto and some stock market traded company shares is that the latter has usually a known non-zero value at the assets level, everything else is just a thin air of trust and expectations. You may see cryptohead-ance as crypto’s base assets.
  - kortilla 5y ago
    “Look at this guy who got caught! Imagine how easy it is to not get caught!” That’s not really a compelling story.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- WalterBright 5y ago
  A person drained money from my account with a forged check. I obtained an image of the check. The payor name did not match mine. The address was in another state. The check paper was very different from mine. The signature was not my name. The handwriting was not mine. The only thing that was mine on the check was the account number. Yet the check sailed through and was honored and my account debited. The bank insisted this was all my fault. The bank insisted they couldn't do anything about it. The bank insisted I call this number, which simply gave me more runaround. So I decided to camp out in the branch manager's office, until they gave up and refunded me the lost money. The cake topper on all this is they then tried to sell me expensive check "security" paper. What a sick joke.
  - acomjean 5y ago
    I had a check stolen in the mail. It was cashed in the Dominican Republic. It was a real check but not to them. My bank stopped it, alerted me and blocked the transfer. I guess it depends on the bank a bit, but that had to suck. What was surprising to me, is that my legacy account# were still in the system (My bank was bought and then bought... 4 times.. over the years).
  - skinnymuch 5y ago
    What exactly does camping out in branch manager’s office mean? How long? Good you got your money back m
- NicoJuicy 5y ago
  That's something entirely different. In this case, the wallet was emptied. The traditional similar thing would be the bank account that is emptied. A forged check would not be sufficient at all. Even for 0,05% of the amount stolen here and it would only be where checks are valid ( would be worthless outside the US)
fourstar 5y ago
> in a company that is part of nasdaq Do you honestly think being part of the nasdaq is a sign of legitimacy?
- xapata 5y ago
  Yes. Do you not?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - ralph84 5y ago
    Given the number of garbage companies that have managed and continue to manage to get themselves listed on Nasdaq or NYSE via reverse mergers, a listing on a US stock exchange just ain't what it used to be.
    - xapata 5y ago
      What ratio of bogus companies to total listed do you estimate?
      - ralph84 5y ago
        In the Chinese reverse merger fraud of the late 2000s/early 2010s there were hundreds of bogus companies that walked off with at least half a trillion dollars. Roughly 10X the size of the Madoff fraud. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_China_Hustle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_China_Hustle
        xapata 5y ago
        Is hundreds significant? It's hard to get a sense of scale without knowing the total number of listed companies.
        ralph84 5y ago
okwubodu 5y ago
We could ask why the bank allowed the money to leave for the same reason.
- obstacle1 5y ago
  It sounds like the bank accounts were owned by the guy's employer and he was perceived to be authorized to transact on the employer's behalf.
  - berberous 5y ago
    The coinbase account was also 'owned' by the guy's employer. He opened up the account in the employer's name, submitted notarized documents, etc.
    - obstacle1 5y ago
      Ah, that is true. Full court doc for anyone interested in reading https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21165768-us_vs_rei_ishii_bc_forfeiture https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21165768-us_vs_rei_i...
kyrra 5y ago
AML (anti-money laundering) likely should have been triggered and caused some manual review processes to look into.
- ryanlol 5y ago
  And who’s to say they weren’t? It’s perfectly feasible to subvert AML procedures by providing fake documents.
modeless 5y ago
He opened the Coinbase account under the bank's name, as a business account, with forged documents. A regular Coinbase account would never be able to do this. Coinbase was fooled in this scheme, but so were both banks, so this is not a case of Coinbase being uniquely vulnerable. And the Bitcoin shenanigans did not help this guy at all in the end, so this is not a case of crypto being useful for crime either.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
perl4ever 5y ago
This happened not long ago, in the "legacy" financial system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_Bank_robbery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_Bank_robbery "Thirty-five fraudulent instructions were issued by security hackers via the SWIFT network to illegally transfer close to US$1 billion from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York account belonging to Bangladesh Bank, the central bank of Bangladesh. Five of the thirty-five fraudulent instructions were successful in transferring US$101 million, with US$20 million traced to Sri Lanka and US$81 million to the Philippines. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York blocked the remaining thirty transactions, amounting to US$850 million, due to suspicions raised by a misspelled instruction.[2] All the money transferred to Sri Lanka has since been recovered. However, as of 2018 only around US$18 million of the US$81 million transferred to the Philippines has been recovered.[3] Most of the money transferred to the Philippines went to four personal accounts, held by single individuals, and not to companies or corporations"
- tata71 5y ago
  This must be one of those DeFi hacks I keep hearing about.
  - obmelvin 5y ago
    Not sure if you are trying to make a joke that I'm missing? If not..no, the GP comment is referring to traditional financial institutions improperly wiring money.
    - vmception 5y ago
      I get that joke, basically people that criticize the entire concept of crypto assets frequently point to thefts of crypto assets and never apply the same standard to financial systems that they respect because they are completely unknowledgeable of the frequency and size of unreversible transfers in the traditional financial system. and then they point to the user experience of how banks at least pretend like the money was returned, which is convenient for the user, something that is also possible to do with using an optional bank custodying crypto deposits.
jetsetgo 5y ago
AnthonyMouse 5y ago
What about this was supposed to raise questions? Large corporations engage in large transactions all the time. Elon Musk decides Tesla is going to buy $1.5 Billion in Bitcoin, so Tesla buys $1.5 Billion in Bitcoin. An electronics manufacturer needs millions of dollars worth of gold in order to make gold contacts for millions of electronic devices, so a truck appears containing millions of dollars worth of gold. It's not even weird. The difference in this case is that he allegedly wasn't authorized, which means he's going to jail. But how is the bank supposed to know that?

aeternum 5y ago

>this guy was able to do that The guy was caught in short order so he really wasn't able to do it. You can steal money pretty easily in the traditional financial system with a simple forged check. Money will likely go through initially but you also will likely be caught in short order.

firekvz 5y ago
He already had the BTC in a cold wallet, meaninig that the whole process was completed (deposit USD into coinbase, exchange to BTC, withdraw it) My point is, coinbase still allowed 154millions USD to be washed on it's exchange. By a random guy who clearly didnt even bother cover his back, imagine what actual organized crime is doing with offshores exchanges.
- bogota 5y ago
  Im trying to imagine it can you help me? Just seems like a classic slippery slope fallacy to me though.
- fastball 5y ago
  Clearly the funds weren't "washed", because they traced them... KYC isn't meant to prevent money from moving at all, it's meant to enable tracing of the money.
  - firekvz 5y ago
    They traced him, because, it seems that he wasn't the smartest criminal in the planet. Just the fact that he was in tokyo (japan), instead of a non US aligned country, such as Russia or China, that he had his private keys easy accesible and that he stayed in BTC instead of going for another crypto more anon friendly, says a lot of the stupid nature of this "criminal" But once again, my whole point is, coinbase allowed a random person to deposit 154 millions USD and withdraw 3.8k btc with absolutely no problems? and in a quickly way, according to the original article I think its safe to assume that the banks said, okay the money went to coinbase, and coinbase just said yeah about that, he used the money to buy BTC and withdrew it to this wallet and thats about it the guy was located cause he didnt even try to hide himself, the rest is history. my point remains, if this, that was a such dumb crime, managed to convert the stolen funds into BTC using coinbase with absolutely no problems, then its easy to assume that real and strong money going to biggest offshores exchanges is from illicit sources.
    - fastball 5y ago
      Why are you holding Coinbase responsible but not the bank?
      - firekvz 5y ago
        Im not holding anyone responsible, im just mentioning that, it's obvious that a lot of the money flowing into crypto its not legal, this sets a clear example of how easy stolen money was washed using coinbase without much problems, its a clear indicator for the big picture, when exchanges like binance has 10x more volume, where do u think that money is really comming from? and that is actually happening on those exchanges with money flowing?
        fastball 5y ago
        You're making a point about how it was so easy for the perp to get money into crypto while seemingly ignoring the fact that it was equally easy for him to move the money around via the traditional banking system.
- fomine3 5y ago
  Yeah. It is impressing that a single person could buy $150M crypto.
- epivosism 5y ago
  You can't use "someone being caught" as evidence of "how easy it is not to get caught" - because you would also treat NOT getting caught to prove the same thing. This would mean that no matter what evidence you observe you would reach the same conclusion... which means the article made no difference to you. To go into more detail, claims like "he was only barely caught" shadow the possibilities of him being caught later, which never had a chance to be realized. i.e. it may appear that he was caught randomly but we owe it to truth to at least dig into what would have happened if that had failed - and that likely requires a domain expert to know the actual security measures in place.
  - monkeycantype 5y ago
    In my highly regulated and audited work, there are cases where people on money laundering lists initiate a transaction, and we can’t block it because it would tip them off that they have been detected, in theory some other department or organization is supposed to follow up
- throwawaycities 5y ago
  But why focus on the cryptocurrency portion of what happened when what happened first was all fiat based? A single person controlled the transfer instructions via email for a $150M insurance transfer. By falsifying the email instructions for the fiat transfer $150M was sent directly to his personal account (no red flags there). Then he was able to transfer $150M from his personal account to coinbase (no red flags there). Why is your focus on the coinbase conversion from fiat to Bitcoin?
  - GauntletWizard 5y ago
    Because the fiat was easily recoverable in the traditional financial system. If they had not caught the guy, or he had already moved the BTC to a mafia-run account, not one he still controlled, it could be lost forever - The great 'benefit' of BTC is that the government has a hard time seizing it.
    - lazide 5y ago
      Yet they seem to have had no trouble doing so in this case?
    - throwawaycities 5y ago
      You do realize financial fraud within the traditional financial system preexisted cryptocurrency right?
      - user-the-name 5y ago
        Yes, and there is tons of hard work being put into it all the time to stop it. This does not happen in crypto.
        throwawaycities 5y ago
        Hard work to stop it? There was a global insurance company that sent an international wire, at least two banks with multiple transactions, and coinbase which is a KYC compliant publicly traded company. Despite ample opportunity, no one stopped this, rather they all facilitated it. This all originated from an email containing fraudulent wire instructions, trying to pin all this on cryptocurrency is less sound than blaming email. Despite all the deflection, law enforcement was able to recover the Bitcoin. Contrary to your point law enforcement and regulators alike have successfully brought legal actions (civil) and prosecutions (criminal) in the blockchain space just as they have against traditional institutions. The insurance company, banks, and coinbase are all to happy cryptocurrency was involved at some point so they can do some magic hand waving, and blame cryptocurrency. I would ask why bother, but obviously it’s a successful PR campaign to excuse their own ineptitude.
- Consultant32452 5y ago
  I worked at a company headquarters and some guy in accounting just switched the banking info for one of the vendors to his own bank info. He stole money for literally years. I don't know how it worked for so long because somehow the vendor must've been getting paid, maybe he was also falsifying invoices or something. I dunno. Anyways, no crypto and this was the corporate headquarters for a company most Americans would know.
- thealig 5y ago
  Do note that the Coinbase business account was created by him fraudulently in the name of the subsidiary of the company (Sony Life) , but actually he had no authorization to do so. [0] [0] -https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21165768-us_vs_rei_ishii_bc_forfeiture#document/p11 https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21165768-us_vs_rei_i...
- paulpauper 5y ago
  I don't think ppl appreciate just how big crypto is. $150 million is tiny compared to how big crypto is ($2.3 trillion). We're taking $60 billion of BTC being traded daily. And same for tether and eth. It's just insane. So it's possible that $150 million could slip through. Crypto is huge. Way bigger than online gambling, sports betting, etc.
  - user-the-name 5y ago
    Crypto "market caps" are complete 100% fiction. They do not represent any kind of real value that exists. They mean nothing.
    - wruza 5y ago
      The company I work at trades crypto deposited/withdrawn from real USD and EUR bank accounts as it would be with any stock exchange broker account, all legal. You may now reduce your fiction percentage to 99.9…9% at least, unless I’m lying for some conspiracy reason.
      - user-the-name 5y ago
        It's not just that prices are complete nonsense and massively manipulated. It's also that multiplying the current price by the number of coins just doesn't mean anything. The resulting number doesn't represent anything real.
        wruza 5y ago
        multiplying the current price by the number of coins just doesn't mean anything It is also true for any regular stock. “Market cap” is just an indicator value of a stock at a given time, not the value, and no one expects all of it to be sold at that sum, because of market dynamics. The resulting number doesn't represent anything real regardless of the asset class. The only difference between crypto and some stock market traded company shares is that the latter has usually a known non-zero value at the assets level, everything else is just a thin air of trust and expectations. You may see cryptohead-ance as crypto’s base assets.
- kortilla 5y ago
  “Look at this guy who got caught! Imagine how easy it is to not get caught!” That’s not really a compelling story.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
WalterBright 5y ago
A person drained money from my account with a forged check. I obtained an image of the check. The payor name did not match mine. The address was in another state. The check paper was very different from mine. The signature was not my name. The handwriting was not mine. The only thing that was mine on the check was the account number. Yet the check sailed through and was honored and my account debited. The bank insisted this was all my fault. The bank insisted they couldn't do anything about it. The bank insisted I call this number, which simply gave me more runaround. So I decided to camp out in the branch manager's office, until they gave up and refunded me the lost money. The cake topper on all this is they then tried to sell me expensive check "security" paper. What a sick joke.
- acomjean 5y ago
  I had a check stolen in the mail. It was cashed in the Dominican Republic. It was a real check but not to them. My bank stopped it, alerted me and blocked the transfer. I guess it depends on the bank a bit, but that had to suck. What was surprising to me, is that my legacy account# were still in the system (My bank was bought and then bought... 4 times.. over the years).
- skinnymuch 5y ago
  What exactly does camping out in branch manager’s office mean? How long? Good you got your money back m
NicoJuicy 5y ago
That's something entirely different. In this case, the wallet was emptied. The traditional similar thing would be the bank account that is emptied. A forged check would not be sufficient at all. Even for 0,05% of the amount stolen here and it would only be where checks are valid ( would be worthless outside the US)

fourstar 5y ago

> in a company that is part of nasdaq Do you honestly think being part of the nasdaq is a sign of legitimacy?

xapata 5y ago
Yes. Do you not?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ralph84 5y ago
  Given the number of garbage companies that have managed and continue to manage to get themselves listed on Nasdaq or NYSE via reverse mergers, a listing on a US stock exchange just ain't what it used to be.
  - xapata 5y ago
    What ratio of bogus companies to total listed do you estimate?
    - ralph84 5y ago
      In the Chinese reverse merger fraud of the late 2000s/early 2010s there were hundreds of bogus companies that walked off with at least half a trillion dollars. Roughly 10X the size of the Madoff fraud. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_China_Hustle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_China_Hustle
      - xapata 5y ago
        Is hundreds significant? It's hard to get a sense of scale without knowing the total number of listed companies.
        ralph84 5y ago

okwubodu 5y ago

We could ask why the bank allowed the money to leave for the same reason.

obstacle1 5y ago
It sounds like the bank accounts were owned by the guy's employer and he was perceived to be authorized to transact on the employer's behalf.
- berberous 5y ago
  The coinbase account was also 'owned' by the guy's employer. He opened up the account in the employer's name, submitted notarized documents, etc.
  - obstacle1 5y ago
    Ah, that is true. Full court doc for anyone interested in reading https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21165768-us_vs_rei_ishii_bc_forfeiture https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21165768-us_vs_rei_i...

kyrra 5y ago

AML (anti-money laundering) likely should have been triggered and caused some manual review processes to look into.

ryanlol 5y ago
And who’s to say they weren’t? It’s perfectly feasible to subvert AML procedures by providing fake documents.

modeless 5y ago

He opened the Coinbase account under the bank's name, as a business account, with forged documents. A regular Coinbase account would never be able to do this. Coinbase was fooled in this scheme, but so were both banks, so this is not a case of Coinbase being uniquely vulnerable. And the Bitcoin shenanigans did not help this guy at all in the end, so this is not a case of crypto being useful for crime either.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

perl4ever 5y ago

This happened not long ago, in the "legacy" financial system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_Bank_robbery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_Bank_robbery "Thirty-five fraudulent instructions were issued by security hackers via the SWIFT network to illegally transfer close to US$1 billion from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York account belonging to Bangladesh Bank, the central bank of Bangladesh. Five of the thirty-five fraudulent instructions were successful in transferring US$101 million, with US$20 million traced to Sri Lanka and US$81 million to the Philippines. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York blocked the remaining thirty transactions, amounting to US$850 million, due to suspicions raised by a misspelled instruction.[2] All the money transferred to Sri Lanka has since been recovered. However, as of 2018 only around US$18 million of the US$81 million transferred to the Philippines has been recovered.[3] Most of the money transferred to the Philippines went to four personal accounts, held by single individuals, and not to companies or corporations"

tata71 5y ago
This must be one of those DeFi hacks I keep hearing about.
- obmelvin 5y ago
  Not sure if you are trying to make a joke that I'm missing? If not..no, the GP comment is referring to traditional financial institutions improperly wiring money.
  - vmception 5y ago
    I get that joke, basically people that criticize the entire concept of crypto assets frequently point to thefts of crypto assets and never apply the same standard to financial systems that they respect because they are completely unknowledgeable of the frequency and size of unreversible transfers in the traditional financial system. and then they point to the user experience of how banks at least pretend like the money was returned, which is convenient for the user, something that is also possible to do with using an optional bank custodying crypto deposits.

jetsetgo 5y ago

AnthonyMouse 5y ago

What about this was supposed to raise questions? Large corporations engage in large transactions all the time. Elon Musk decides Tesla is going to buy $1.5 Billion in Bitcoin, so Tesla buys $1.5 Billion in Bitcoin. An electronics manufacturer needs millions of dollars worth of gold in order to make gold contacts for millions of electronic devices, so a truck appears containing millions of dollars worth of gold. It's not even weird. The difference in this case is that he allegedly wasn't authorized, which means he's going to jail. But how is the bank supposed to know that?