100 million bitcoin fivefold in value after they were stolen

Many people have opened their eyes to cryptocurrency in recent years, but it is not to be underestimated that people have different intentions. Not all of them have clean flour in their bags, and simply have plans to use cryptocurrency for crime .

Since cryptocurrency is a decentralized concept where the transactions are not monitored by a third party, it can be said that this is a system that is largely based on trust. But this system does not always work as well, and unfortunately there are a number of examples of cryptocurrencies that have been lost through theft.

In this article, we will consider one of these examples – and there is no other way to describe it than that it is an extraordinary example, because the theft was in the box, it all took an unexpected turn.

100 million bitcoin was stolen

The example in this article actually goes back to 2016 , because it was at this time that it all took place.

In 2016, a couple were accused of laundering cryptocurrency. They did this by hacking a currency changer.

The amount stolen was as much as 100 million US dollars. This corresponds to a little over 900 million in Norwegian kroner. But then what many thought was impossible happened.

Five times the value after the theft

As mentioned, the girlfriend managed to cheat 100 million US dollars, but as most people know, bitcoin suddenly shot up in 2017 – that is, one year after the million theft.

At the end of 2017, bitcoin was something everyone talked about. The concept was on everyone’s lips – in one way or another. Some were positive about the cryptocurrency, while others thought it was worse than the Black Death.

But bitcoin (and other cryptocurrencies) is associated with high volatility, and in 2017 bitcoin was in a good period. This naturally led to a very large increase in value, and this applies to both non-stolen and stolen coins.

The value of the stolen US dollars worth 100 million thus increased in value. And it ended up costing as much as $ 5 trillion! It’s a crazy sum.

What happened after the theft?

After the theft, the couple were charged with money laundering, but with that said, the hacking of the currency exchanger was not mentioned in a single word in the indictment.

However, it was revealed that much of the money laundering took place on the dark web. This site has since been shut down, so no one is using this site anymore.

After they had the money laundering cryptocurrency, the couple used it to buy gold , NFT and gift cards. But these are of course just some examples of what the money was spent on.

In the wake of the theft, the United States has selected a team that deals with cryptocurrency enforcement. This is an attempt to put an end to this trend and express that such crime goes unnoticed.