One of the Earliest Bitcoin Developers has all of his BTC Stolen

One of the original Bitcoin developers, Luke Dashjr, revealed on Twitter that his Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) key was hacked and that his bitcoins were lost. 

Although the exact amount of lost bitcoin is still unknown, Dashjr reports that a sizable amount appears to have been sent to a wallet address 1YAR6opJCfDjBNdn5bV8b5Mcu84tv92fa using the CoinJoin mixing service.

All the wallet transactions point out to the fact that at least more than 200 BTC have been stolen which are worth more than $3 million at current prices.

In his tweets, Dashjr stated that he was just made aware of the current hack after receiving emails from Coinbase and Kraken regarding failed login attempts. 

After realizing about the theft, the well-known coder showed shock and surprise and wondered why he can’t get through to anyone at the FBI or IC3.

The tweet reads: “What the heck @FBI @ic3 why can’t I reach anyone???”

Dashjr, who is one of the most skilled individuals in the cryptocurrency industry, turned to social media to seek help with what seems to be an illegal act by an unidentified attacker. The whole crypto industry is shaken with many hack attempts. According to a recent Forbes analysis, over $3 billion has allegedly been hacked from cryptocurrency projects this year.

Binance CEO Reaches out

Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, CEO of Binance, also took notice of the tragedy and expressed his sympathy and support in a post on January 1. 

He states: 

“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.” 

However, others seem to imply that it wasn’t a hack at all and might be an attempt to show that he was involved in a “boating accident” just in time for tax season. 

The term “boating accident” refers to a continuous hoax about people attempting to dodge tax payments by claiming they lost all their cryptocurrency in a “Tragic boating accident.