<story><title>US Attorney Announces $3.36B Cryptocurrency Seizure in Connection with Silk Road</title><url>https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/us-attorney-announces-historic-336-billion-cryptocurrency-seizure-and-conviction</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nrmitchi</author><text>I may get slammed for this, but I don’t understand the resources that apparently went into tracking down some kid who stole from an illegal marketplace a decade again.&lt;p&gt;This feels way less like “pursing justice” and more like trying to track down everything the just I’ve department can seize and auction off. If Bitcoin hadn’t &lt;i&gt;drastically&lt;/i&gt; increased in value since the original event, would this have ever been tracked down?&lt;p&gt;I cant even count the number of much more consumer-impacting crypto-related frauds, crimes, and hacks from the last 3 years that would be more deserving of justice department attention, rather than focusing resources and attention on a double withdrawal bug from an illegal marketplace from a decade ago.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>michaelt</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; I don’t understand the resources that apparently went into tracking down some kid who stole from an illegal marketplace a decade again.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;1. I suspect that the justice system feels that, as a matter of principle, they ought to keep the heat on darknet markets generally. That getting darknet market related arrests in the news has deterrent value, and shows they&amp;#x27;re doing their job. Obviously, arresting operators or big sellers would be even better - but any darknet market arrests are better than none at all.&lt;p&gt;2. They recovered $3.3 Billion, so the ROI on agents&amp;#x27; time is probably pretty good. American society loves it when police departments are funded with criminals&amp;#x27; money, through aggressive traffic ticketing and civil forfeiture! So this is really no different to fining a driver for doing 55 in a 54, except with much less police time used. From a certain perspective, this is one of the most productive uses of resources the department could possibly make.</text></comment>
<story><title>US Attorney Announces $3.36B Cryptocurrency Seizure in Connection with Silk Road</title><url>https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/us-attorney-announces-historic-336-billion-cryptocurrency-seizure-and-conviction</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nrmitchi</author><text>I may get slammed for this, but I don’t understand the resources that apparently went into tracking down some kid who stole from an illegal marketplace a decade again.&lt;p&gt;This feels way less like “pursing justice” and more like trying to track down everything the just I’ve department can seize and auction off. If Bitcoin hadn’t &lt;i&gt;drastically&lt;/i&gt; increased in value since the original event, would this have ever been tracked down?&lt;p&gt;I cant even count the number of much more consumer-impacting crypto-related frauds, crimes, and hacks from the last 3 years that would be more deserving of justice department attention, rather than focusing resources and attention on a double withdrawal bug from an illegal marketplace from a decade ago.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>xyzzy4747</author><text>It’s probably because he accumulated billions of dollars of property that weren’t taxed, and illegally on top of that (although they were worth much less at the time).&lt;p&gt;It kind of sucks for him that he had to forfeit the Bitcoin and not just the dollar amount he stole at the time. I am sure if it was the other way around, and Bitcoin went to $0, they would take the historical dollar amount he stole instead.</text></comment>