The US Department of Justice recently reported the largest seizure in cryptocurrency history to date. Investigators secured around 95,000 bitcoins worth around $3.6 billion at the time of the action and are even worth $4.2 billion at the current rate.
A married couple – American-Russian citizen Ilya Lichtenstein and American Heather Morgan – have been named as the main suspects. The bitcoins come from the Bitfinex crypto exchange’s hack of around 120,000 bitcoins (currently the equivalent of $4.5 billion) in 2016 and were worth around $70 million at the time. Still, the price has risen drastically since then.
Author and CEO
However, the cause also arouses interest for other reasons. Because Morgan is no stranger, she has published several articles for the US magazine “Forbes ” – most recently about an African-American chef at the Met Gala – and has been the head of Salesfolk, a company specializing in email marketing, since 2009. As such, she wrote, among other things, a book on “The Art of Cold Emails,” which broadly discusses how to generate more replies to unannounced emails sent to prospects. She is also the CEO of Endpass, which offers AI-powered identity verification and fraud prevention.
She also tried her hand at rapping under the pseudonym “Razzlekhan,” authorities revealed. Her self-description as “Crocodile of Wall Street”. She describes her musicianship as “like Genghis Khan, but with more pizzazz”, aiming to “stand up for underdogs and troublemakers”. In the song “Versace Bedouin”, she raps, among other things, about “entrepreneurs and hackers”. She also ran an appearance on Tiktok, where she gave business and investment tips, among other things.
Complex scam
Morgan is accused of assisting her husband in ineffectively “laundering” the bitcoins through a complicated system involving a series of fake identities and misleading several financial service providers. The authorities are said to have succeeded in the confiscation because Lichtenstein stored the addresses of the wallets used and the private keys for the same in a list in the cloud storage of his email provider. They gained access to this memory then cracked the encrypted file.
According to the sources, the couple has already converted some bitcoins into money. With the proceeds, the two bought, among other things, NFTs, but also more everyday things – such as vouchers for the supermarket chain Walmart. Bitfinex said it would work with the US Department of Justice to get the confiscated bitcoins back under its control. (GPI, 9.2.2022)
A US couple allegedly wanted to launder stolen Bitcoin worth billions. You’ve been caught – but is money laundering even possible with cryptocurrencies?
After a price record of around 2070 US dollars in August 2020, the gold market ran out of air so that an ounce of the precious metal is now only worth 1860 dollars – that is around ten per cent less. In theory, gold is considered a protection against inflation since the precious metal supply can hardly be increased, in contrast to currencies, which central banks can increase at will. Has gold become obsolete in this regard?
The Austrian Mint paints a different picture, which achieved a record result last year thanks to the high demand for gold coins and bars: “The year 2022 began as 2021 ended,” says spokeswoman Andrea Lang. “We can hardly keep up with the demand.” According to her, it is striking that interest in gold is vital in all world regions. “At the moment, we are feeling a very high demand worldwide, especially for physical products.”
Alternative to the savings account
According to Lang, what is driving interest in precious metals is the current high level of inflation. In addition, since there is no longer any interest on savings accounts, she sees gold as a suitable alternative to prevent liquidity bottlenecks. “You don’t have to be wealthy to be interested in gold,” says the spokeswoman. The Austrian Mint produces gold bars and the Philharmonic bullion coin, which is also very popular internationally.
The high physical demand was offset by constant supply in the previous year. According to Erste Group, in the first three quarters of 2021, gold mine production increased to a record level, but a lower amount of recycled gold offset this. However, the investment demand for so-called gold ETFs, i.e. exchange-traded funds on the precious metal, has declined. Hans Engel, an analyst at Erste Group, explains the weak development of the world market price in the previous year because the price development of gold is much weaker on rising stock markets than on heavily fluctuating stock exchanges.
